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V,^' :'4;d;/: 




TO 

E. M. L. 
M. T. B. L. 

AND 

c. w. 



I 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 






j 



CHATEAU OF CHINON 

TOUR DU MOULIN AND CHATEAU DE COUDRAY AT LEFT, CHATEAU DU MILIEU BEYOND 



THE CHATEAUX 

OF 

TOURAINE 



m 

KM 

m 

WW 

I 



BY 



MARIA HORNOR LANSDALE 



ILLUSTRATED WITH PICTURES BY 

JULES GUERIN 

AND BY PHOTOGRAPHS 



NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 

1906 



94W 




''«A7* 



•'.«*«,.- 



rrr^l^Mfi 



UIBI»A«Y of CONGRESS 
Twe CO»iM RtCMvM 

SEP 28 ^flOfi 

CLASS y\ XXC, N» 



Copyright 1905, 1906, by 
The Century Co. 



Published October, igo6 



THE DE VINNE PRESS 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

TOURS 

Origin and Development of the Chateaux— Saint Martin— His Early 
History— Becomes Bishop of Csesarodtmum (Tours)— His Death 
—Pilgrimages to His Tomb— Basilica of St. Martin— Chateauneuf 
—Ancient Buildings— XIHth Century Customs— House of Tris- 
tan I'Hermite- Hotel Gouin— Fountain in the Grand Marche— 
Development of the Two Towns— Tours— The Cathedral of St. 
Gatien— Tomb of the Children of Charles VHI- The Cloister— 
The Archeveche— The Archbishops of the Middle Ages— Cere- 
mony of an Institution— View from the South Tower of the 
Cathedral 



CHAPTER n 

TOURS (Continued) 

Saint Martin's House at Tours— Marmoutier founded — Urban H 
preaches the First Crusade — The "Portail de la Crosse" — Later 
History of Marmoutier — The Bridge of St. Symphorien — The 
Tour de Guise — Escape of the Duke of Guise — Rule of Henry H, 
Plantagenet, in Touraine — Misery in Tours during the English 
Wars— Archibald, Earl of Douglas created Duke of Touraine — 
The old Chateau Royal of Tours— Marriage of the Dauphin, 
Louis XI, and Margaret of Scotland— Her Unhappiness and Early 
Death — Louis XI builds Plessis-les-Tours — Its Position in the 
History of Architecture — Death of Louis XI — Philippe de Com- 
mines — James Cottier — Henry III at Tours — His Alliance with 
Henry of Navarre— He is murdered at St. Cloud— The Abbey 
Church of St. Julien— Suburb and Church of St. Pierre des Corps 
—The Story of Avisseau— The Rue Royale— The Pont de Pierre 
— Birthplace of Balzac— The Museum— The Town Library , . 29 

Vll 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER III 
LOCHES 

PAGE 

Position of Loches — The Keep of Montbazon — The Abbey of Beau- 
Heu — First View of the Chateau — M. Cesar and his Wonderful 
Discovery — The Donjon of Fulk Nerra — The Tours-a-bec — Plan 
of the Citadel— The Guard Room and Bedsteads of the Scottish 
Guard — The Cell of Philippe de Commines — Present Aspect of the 
Donjon — Interior View — Oratory of Saint Salle-boeuf — Fulk Nerra 
— The Struggle for Touraine — The Battle of Pontlevoi — His Pil- 
grimages to the Holy Land — His Superstition — Policy — Death — 
His Tomb at Beaulieu — Geoffrey Martel — Fulk le Rechin — 
Machinations of Bertrade de Montfort — Marriage of Geoffrey 
Plantagenet and the ex-Empress Matilda — Sieges and Counter- 
sieges — John Lackland and Philip Augustus — The Murder of 
Arthur of Brittany— The Campaign of 1204-5 — The Citadel re- 
modeled—The Tour Ronde— The Torture Chamber— "Cages" — 
Cardinal La Balue— Philippe de Commines — His Description of 
the Cage of Loches— A "Relic of Despotism," it is destroyed in 
the Revolution— Prisoners in the Tour Ronde— View from the 
Summit— The Dungeons of the Martelet— The Cell of Ludovico 
Sforza— Louis Xllth's Claim to the Duchy of Milan— "Monsieur 
Ludovico"— The "Cell of the Bishops"— Conspiracy of the Con- 
stable de Bourbon— Trial of Jean de Poitiers— "L^ Roi s' Amuse" 
"Oubliettes"— Dungeons of the Middle Ages— A Strange Dis- 
covery re 

CHAPTER IV 

LOCHES (Continued) 

The Collegiate Church of St. Mary Magdalene— Geoffrey Grisego- 
nelle— Foundation of the Church of Notre Dame du Chateau de 
Loches— The Girdle of the Virgin— Privileges enjoyed by the 
Chapter— "No Archbishops !"— Date of the Present Building- 
Peculiarities of Design— The Parish Church of St. Ours— The 
Royal Chateau— Change in the Domestic Architecture of France 
—Charles VII builds the Tour Agnes Sorel— An Anecdote told by 
Bernard du Haillon and its Consequences— The Quatrain of Fran- 
cis I— First Meeting between Agnes Sorel and the King— The 
Treaty of Arras— The King's New Counsellors— The Expedition 

viii 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



to Normandy— Influence of the "Belle des Belles"— Her Char- 
acter, Beauty and Extravagance— "Dame de Beaute"— Her Death 
—Relations between the Favorite and the Dauphin— Her Tomb 
in the Collegiate Church— The "New Rooms" of the Chateau- 
Charlotte of Savoy— Additions of Louis XH- Bedchamber and 
Oratory of Anne of Brittany— Her Device— The Chancelleries— 
The Tour St. Antoine— The Horse-chestnut Tree of Francis I— 
James V at Loches— The Huguenots— "Setting on the Hounds" 
—The Revolution at Loches 87 



CHAPTER V 

CHINON 

Roman and Visigoth— The Siege of 463— Saint Mesme— Thibaud 
the Cheat — His Castle at Chinon— Imprisonment of the "Bearded 
Count" of Anjou— Henry Plantagenet— Eleanor of Aquitaine— 
Her Numerous Suitors— The Count of Anjou Wins— "L^^y Plan- 
tagenets avaient tous les honheurs" — The Murder of Thomas 
Becket— King Henry and Philip Augustus— The Meeting at Bon 
Moulins— Father and Son — Reverses— The Conference at Colom- 
biers— The "Kiss of Peace"— "Your Son, Count John"— Death 
of Henry II at Chinon — Richard the Lion-hearted, Philip Augus- 
tus and John Lackland — Suppression of the Knights Templars — 
The Donjon de Coudray — Philip of Valois — The French Succes- 
sion — The Hundred- Years War — Crecy and Poitiers — King John 
the Good taken Prisoner — Quarrel between the Houses of Bur- 
gundy and Orleans — The Disaster of Azincourt — Armagnacs and 
Burgundians — Misery of the Country — The Meeting on the Bridge 
of Montereau — The "Hole through which the English entered 
France" — The "Self-styled" Dauphin — The Deaths of the Kings 
— Le Roi de Bourges — The Favorites — Georges de la Tremoille 
— Advance of the English — The Battle of Verneuil — The Siege of 
Orleans — The Peasant-Maid of Domremy— Voices — The Ride to 
Chinon — Is this the Maid? — The Interview with the King — "I have 
a Sign" — A Brilliant Campaign— Prisoner of War— Deserted— 
The Trial and Condemnation— A National Crime— The Rehabilita- 
tion—Results of the Campaign— Chinon of To-day— The 
Chateau— The Grand'Salle— The Chapel of St. Martin— The 
Downfall of a Favorite— Agnes Sorel again— The Church of St. 
Etienne— The Church of St. Maurice— L^ Style Plantagenet— A 
Duke in a Cage— Rabelais— Reception of Caesar Borgia— Property 
of the State— Day-dreams 109 

ix 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VI 

LANGEAIS 

PAGE 

The Count of Anjou and the Count of Blois— Fulk Nerra's Keep— 
Langeais passes to the Crown— A Fortunate Chamberlain— Marie 
de Brabant— An Error in Judgment— Fall of De la Broce— The 
XVth Century Building— Plan of the Chateau— The Donjon and 
Chemin de Ronde— View from the Summit— The Conspiracy of 
Cinq-Mars— The Little Duchess of Brittany— A Desirable Partie 
—Stormy Wooings— The Suitors— Maximilian of Austria— Alain 
d'Albret— The Duke of Orleans— Charles VIII— The Wedding 
at Langeais— The Marriage Contract— Brittany united to the 
Crown — A Successful Restoration 147 

CHAPTER VII 

AMBOISE 

Early History — The "Illustrious House of Amboise" — The Family 
of Orleans — Notre Dame du Bout-des-Ponts — The Bridges — 
Buildings of the Chateau — The Chapel of St. Hubert — Tomb of 
Leonardo da Vinci — Louis XI and the Dauphin — The Buildings 
of Charles VIII — The Logis du Roi — The Tour des Minimes and 
the Tour Heurtault — The Expedition into Italy — The Conquest of 
Naples — Reverses — Death of the Dauphin — Ill-timed Gaiety of 
the Duke of Orleans— The Death of Charles VIII— The Marriage 
Contract of Langeais — Divorce of Jeanne of France — Marriage 
of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany— Additions to the Chateau — 
The First Orange Trees in France — Francis I at Amboise — 
Henry II and Diane of Poitiers — Power of the Guises — The Re- 
naudie Conspiracy— The "Silent Captain"— The Court of Amboise 
—Failure of the Plot— Triumph of the Guises— Huguenot Mas- 
sacres—An "Act of Faith"— Dj>w nous soit doux et favorable 
—The Last Salute— Civil War— The "Edict of Amboise"— 
Prisoners of State— La Fontaine's Visit to Amboise— Vandalism 
of Roger Ducos— The Orleans Family— Abd-el-Kader .... 169 

CHAPTER VIII 

BLOIS 

The Original Fortress— The First Orleans Count of Blois— Rivalry 
with the Duke of Burgundy— The Murder of the Duke of Orleans 

X 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



—Valentine Visconti— The Poet-Prince of Orleans— The Chateau 
—The Grand'Salle— The Wing of Louis XII— Mansard's Wing— 
The Wing of Francis I— The Staircase of Blois— Louis XII and 
Anne of Brittany— Marriage of the Princess Claude— Death of 
the Queen— Court Mourning— Marriage of Louis XII and Mary 
Tudor— "Good King Louis is Dead !"— Francis I of Angouleme— 
Origin of the House of Guise— Duke Francis and Cardinal Lor- 
raine—Henry the King and Henry the Duke— The Court at Blois 
— "The King is Coming!"— Murder of the Duke of Guise— Death 
of Catherine de Medicis— Murder of Cardinal Guise— Assassina- 
tion of Henry III— Henry of Navarre— The Regency of Marie de 
Medicis— Louis XIII and Charles d'Albert of Luynes— Concino 
Concini— Murder of the Favorite— The Queen-mother exiled to 
Blois— The Escape— Last Years of Marie de Medicis— Gaston of 
Orleans at Blois— Restoration of the Chateau— The Town of Blois 201 



CHAPTER IX 

LUYNES 

Charles d'Albert, First Duke of Luynes— The Chateau of Maille— 
Cave Dwellings along the Loire — A Fete Day at Luynes — Saint 
Genevieve — The Manor of St. Venant and the Aqueduct— The 
Chapel of St. Sepulchre — The Marriage of the Third Duke of 
Luynes — The Passing of the Feudal Chateau 245 



CHAPTER X 

CHENONCEAUX 

A Brilliant Example of the French Renaissance — The Family of 
Marques — Thomas Bohier and Katherine Brigonnet — The Cardinal 
of St. Malo— Chenonceaux passes to the Crown— The River Cher 
—The Chateau— The Cabinet F^r/— Diane of Poitiers— The 
Ownership of Chenonceaux — Legal Quibbles — The Favorite In- 
stalled—The Gardens— The Bridge across the Cher— Death of 
Henry II— Catherine de Medicis— An Unpopular Marriage- 
Power at Last — The Favorite Dispossessed— Additions to the 
Chateau— Entry of Francis II and Mary Stuart— The Prince of 
Conde and the Duke of Guise— A BrilHant Fete— The "Flying 
Squadron"— Henry III at Chenonceaux— La Reine Blanche- 
Assassination of the King— A New Order of Things— Gabrielle 

xi 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

d'Estrees— Cesar, Duke of Vendome— The Chalais Conspiracy- 
Changes in Ownership — Present State of Chenonceaux .... 257 



CHAPTER XI 

AZAY-LE-RIDEAU 

The Chateau— A Burgundian Garrison— "Little Paris Pates!"— 
Azay-le-Brule — The Town Walls — Growth of the Commune — 
Gilles Bertholet, the Builder of the Chateau — The Semblengay Ad- 
ministration — Historic Rooms — The Church ... 291 



CHAPTER XH 

CHAUMONT 

The "Garenne de la Comtesse"— Sulpice H of Amboise— Pierre 
d'Amboise joins the League dii Bien Public and loses Chaumont — 
Charles d'Amboise— The New Chateau— The Courtyard— Cardinal 
d'Amboise— "Lam^ J faire a Georges"— Catherine de Medicis 
buys Chaumont— The Astrologer Ruggieri— A Strange Experience 
— Chaumont and Chenonceaux— A Succession of Owners— Le- 
Ray-Chaumont and his Terra-Cotta Works— A Distinguished 
Visitor— Mme. de Stael at Fosse— Vicomte Walsh— Present Aspect 
of the Chateau 



307 



CHAPTER XHI 
CHAMBORD AND CHEVERNEY 

Character of the Country— A Midnight Adventure— The Chateau of 
Francis I— The Park— Plan of the Chateau— The Guard Room— 
The Double Stair— The Roof s— Francis I at Chambord— Gaston 
of Orleans— The Grande Mademoiselle— Louis XIV at Chambord 
— Moliere and the Bourgeois Gentilhomme— Mme. de Maintenon— 
An Exiled King— Marshal Saxe— Two more Years of Revelry 

■ —Abandonment and Neglect— The Nation's Gift— Paul Louis 
Courier's Protest— The Revolution of July— The Count of Cham- 
bord— His Letter to the French People— Present State of the 
Chateau— Cheverney— The Family of Hurault— A Peaceful 
Memory ^20 

xii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Chateau of Chinon Frontispiece 

Tour du iMoulin and Chateau de Coudray at left Chateau du Milieu 

beyond. 
Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

PAGE 

Cathedral of Tours 5 

From a photograph. 

The Tour Charlemagne, belonging to the ancient basilica of St. 

Martin of Tours 12 

From a photograph. 

House of Tristan the Hermit. Louis XI's hangman 17 

From a photograph. 



Tomb of the children of Charles A'HI and Anne of Brittany . 
From a photograph. 



^3 



Portal of the Cross. Abbey of Marmoutier 34 

From a photograph. 

Facade of Chateau of Plessis-les-Tours 39 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Plessis-les-Tours = . 45 

From a photograph. 

View of Tours Cathedral, stone bridge across the Loire ... 51 
From a photograph. 

Chateau of Loches : the wall of enceinte and top of Tour Ronde . 60 
Dra-R-n by Jules Guerin. 

Chateau of Loches : the Renaissance buildings, seen from the 

town 65 

Drawn b}- Jules Guerin. 

Tours-a-bec, with top of Fulk Xerra's donjon, at Loches ... 72 

From a photograph. 

Tours-a-bec. Fulk X'erra's donjon, and Tour Ronde or Tour 

Louis XI 77 

From a photograph. 

xiii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The cell of Ludovico Sforza 83 

From a photograph. 

The Collegiate Church of St. Ours ' . 90 

From a photograph. 

Guard house, donjon, and Tour Ronde or Tour Louis XI . . . 94 

From a photograph. 

Tower of Agnes Sorel 99 ' 

From a photograph. 

Loches: the Chateau and the Collegiate Church of St. Ours . . 105 • 

P^rom a photograph. 

Entrance gate to Chateau of Chinon built by Henry Plantagenet 124 

From a photograph. 

Chateau and town of Chinon, with bridge across the Vienne . .133 
From a photograph. 

Ruin of the Grand' Salle, where Jeanne d'Arc first met Charles VII 140 
From a photograph. 

Approach to the gate of the Chateau of Langeais 154 

Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

View of Chateau of Langeais from the court-yard ... .157 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Langeais, drawbridge 164 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Langeais : view from the court 167 

Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

Chateau and town of Amboise, as seen from the opposite bank 

of the Loire 174 

From a photograph. 

Portal of Chapel of St. Hubert 180 

From a photograph. 

Chapel of St. Hubert and Tour Heurtault 183 

From a photograph. 

Tour Minimes and wing of Louis XII, Amboise 190 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Amboise, Chapel of St. Hubert and Tour Heurtault 193 

From a photograph. 

xiv 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



Chateau of Amboise : view from the bridge over the Loire . .197 

Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

Entrance to the Chateau of Blois (fagade of Louis XII) . . . 204 - 
Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

Grand staircase of Francis I 208 

From a photograph. 

Wing of Francis I, Blois 217 

From a photograph. 

Entrance through wing of Louis XII, Blois 222 

From a photograph. 

Court of the Chateau of Blois 227 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Blois, wing of Francis I, showing window from which 
Marie de Medicis escaped, the Tour du Moulin and end of 
wing of Gaston of Orleans 234 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Blois, viewed from a street of the town : wing of Fran- 
cis I on the left 237 - 

Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

Chateau of Blois : wing of Louis XII, exterior fagade .... 241 
From a photograph. 

Chateau of Luynes, showing part of the feudal buildings of the 

XVth century 249 

Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

Chateau of Luynes 253 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Chenonceaux: principal entrance 260 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Chenonceaux, showing chapel and donjon .... 265 ^ 
From a photograph. 

Chateau of Chenonceaux, looking up-stream from the right bank 

of the Cher 270 

Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

Chenonceaux, showing the chapel to the right, viewed from the 

left bank of the Cher 279 - 

Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

XV 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



Chateau of Chenonceaux, with gallery across the Cher .... 284 
From a photograph. 

Chateau of Chenonceaux, with gallery across the Cher — another 

view , , , . 289 

From a photograph. 

Main entrance to Chateau of Azay-le-Rideau 294 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Azay-le-Rideau, west facade 297 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Azay-le-Rideau : showing the moat 301 - 

Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

Side entrance to the Chateau of Azay-le-Rideau ...... 304 ^ 

Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

Chateau of Chaumont: entrance 312 

From a photograph. 

Approach to the Chateau of Chaumont: the Loire at the left . 316 
From a photograph. 

Chateau of Chaumont, view from court-yard 319 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Chaumont : view from the right bank of the Loire . 325 

Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

Eastern facade of the Chateau of Chambord ....... 332 

Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

Chateau of Chambord, facade facing the Cosson . . . . . . 336 - 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Chambord, lantern and summit of the double stair . 339 
From a photograph. 

Chateau of Cheverney: from the garden 343 - 

Drawn by Jules Guerin. 

Chateau of Chambord : La Salle des Gardes 348 

From a photograph. 

Chateau of Cheverney . 351 

From a photograph. 



XVI 



PREFACE 



The marvellous charm of the Chateaux of Touraine which, 
year by year, casts its spell over pilgrims from every quarter of 
the globe, is born of a variety of causes. Added to the captivat- 
ing beauty of these ancient buildings, their architectural inter- 
est, the loveliness of the surrounding country and the halo of his- 
torical associations in which each is enwrapped, is their sur- 
prising variance. Thus while nine of the twelve chateaux with 
which this book has to do are actually in Touraine, and the 
remaining three — Blois, Chambord and Cheverney — in the ad- 
jacent province of Orleanais, no two of them are alike, and the 
impression left upon the mind by each is distinct and individual. 

Chinon in ruins, and with its ringing memories of the great- 
est of the Plantagenets and of the warrior Pucelle, has nothing 
in common with near-by Azay-le-Rideau, where all is complete, 
placid, dainty. Langeais shows us the feudal castle in its 
prime, armed cap-a-pie as on the day when it gave shelter to 
the breathless little Bretonne Duchess riding to her hurried 
nuptials with the King of France. At Loches can be traced 
the entire process by which the square keep of the early feudal 
age developed into the Renaissance chateau; while Chenon- 
ceaux shows us that Renaissance chateau in its completest, 
most engaging form. 

In situation, history, ownership, Plessis-les-Tours is as far 
removed from Chaumont or Blois as Amboise and Luynes are 

xvii 



PREFACE 

from Cheverney. While Chambord, that fantastic utterance of 
a society in decadence, is surely unlike, not the neighboring 
chateaux alone, but anything else in the world. 

It is to Chambord, however, that all the others lead. From 
the moment when the nobles, returning from their southern 
campaign, began to require light and air and space and orna- 
ment, a change becomes apparent. Hitherto the baron had 
fared in such matters but little better than the poorest among 
his dependents ; but now, in proportion as the dwellings of the 
rich expanded, those of the poor became more squalid; and 
Louis XIV, riding with unseeing eyes past the miserable 
hovels of the peasantry to find Chambord too small, is but a 
presage of the French Revolution. 

M. H. L. 

La Mothe, Artannes, Touraine, 
Ascension Day, 1906. 



XVlll 



TOURS 



THE 

CHATEAUX OFTOURAINE 



CHAPTER I 



TOURS 



IN primitive times when forests were thick and roads were 
few and bad, the rivers of a sparsely settled country formed 
its readiest means of intercommunication. When Gaul was 
conquered by the Romans, about the beginning of the Christian 
era, one of the longest of these natural highways was the river 
Loire, which, taking its rise in Languedoc, flows north for nearly 
two-thirds of its length, makes a sharp bend at Orleans, and 
thence pursues a southwesterly direction to the sea, through 
the old provinces of Orleanais and Touraine and Anjou. In its 
passage through Touraine the Loire is fed by no fewer than 
three great tributary streams, all flowing into it from the 
south: the Cher, the Indre and the Vienne. 

Through this fertile district the Romans built a system of 
roads following often the lines of the waterways and connecting 
the centrally placed city of Csesarodunum, now called Tours, 
with the more distant parts of Gaul. The roads they protected 
by a line of forts or castra raised wherever some rocky height 
or especially bold projection afforded a good position. 

3 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

It is in these Roman castra, themselves often occupying the 
sites of still earlier Gaulish strongholds, that many of the 
French chateaux have their origin. As Visigoth succeeded to 
Roman and Frank to Visigoth these strong places were taken 
and refortified, each forming the nucleus in those uneasy times 
about which a little settlement grew up. With the mcrease in 
power of the feudal barons great square keeps rose upon these 
sites which, however, came in time to be such a source of men- 
ace that, when a convenient pretext offered, the crown either 
seized them outright or caused them to be razed to the ground. 
Thus of the twelve chateaux with which we shall have to do, 
Cheverney, not built till the XVIth century, and Luynes are the 
only two which at one time or another have not been the prop- 
erty of the crown. 

Finally, with the close of the Hundred Years War, and the 
stamping out of the feudal power under Louis XI, the chateaux 
along the pleasant banks of the Loire, the Cher, the Indre and 
the Vienne, lost their fortress-like character and became resi- 
dences of royalty and of nobles and even in some cases of the 
wealthy bourgeoisie. 

It is in this latest phase that we see them to-day, sometimes 
in ruins, sometimes in prosperous occupation, and sometimes in 
the cold state of a show place, but always full of historical 
interest, of beauty and of individual charm. 

Tours, which is the natural and most convenient centre from 
which to visit these twelve surrounding chateaux, stands upon 
the left bank of the Loire some four or five hours south of Paris 
by rail. As early as the Gallo-Roman period Tours was a 
place of importance ; it became the seat of a bishopric soon after 
the introduction of Christianity into Gaul, about the close of 

4 



CATHEDRAL OF TOURS 



I 




„/*» 




TOURS 

the lid century, and it is to its third bishop, Martin, soldier, 
missionary and saint, that much of its later prosperity and im- 
portance are due. 

Saint Martin, who was the son of a tribune in the Roman 
army and himself a member of the Imperial Guard of Constan- 
tine, was stationed at Amiens in the winter of 338-9. He was a 
Christian, but had never yet been baptized. Returning one 
bitterly cold night from a tour of inspection, he was accosted 
at the city gate by a wretched, shivering beggar. Having no 
money to give, he took off his chlamyde or military cloak, a 
square of thick white cloth, rounded on one side and held in 
place by a brooch, and cutting it in two with his sword, he gave 
one half to the beggar. 

That night the Saviour appeared to him: *'See Martin," he 
said, "is not this your cloak?" Then, turning to the heavenly 
beings who accompanied him, he added: "Martin, though only 
a catechumen, has covered me with his cloak." Deeply moved 
by the vision and by the gentle reproof conveyed in the Sa- 
viour's words, Martin at once applied for baptism, and quitting 
the army later on, established himself at Poitiers among 
the disciples of Saint Hilary. After completing his novitiate he 
withdrew^ to a cave situated in the wild valley of Liguge south 
of Poitiers, and from there he began his great missionary work 
among the heathen of Gaul. 

In the year 370, Lidoire, Metropolitan of Csesarodunum, died, 
and the fame of the hermit of Liguge having spread abroad, 
the people would have no one else for their bishop. For twenty- 
seven years, accordingly, Martin filled the see, becoming so uni- 
versally revered for his piety and reputed miracles that, when his 
death occurred at last at Candes (November 11, 397) the people 

7 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

of that town were determined to keep his body, and his own 
disciples had to steal away with it secretly and in the dead of 
night. 

Arrived safely at Caesarodunum, the remains were depos- 
ited temporarily at a spot in the present rue du Petit St. Martin, 
and buried the next day according to custom outside the walls 
of the Roman city. 

Within a hundred years of the time of his death the cult of 
Saint Martin had become popular throughout Gaul. The prim- 
itive little chapel that had been erected over his grave gave 
place to a larger and more pretentious building, and this in 
turn was replaced in the Xlth and Xllth centuries by a magnifi- 
cent basilica, so filled with rare objects and costly gifts that its 
fame spread throughout Christendom. During the Middle 
Ages, indeed, nothing contributed more to the wealth and in- 
fluence of a community than to possess the bones of a bona- 
fide saint and Martin's reputation for sanctity was unques- 
tioned. When Clovis was marching his victorious army 
through Touraine in 507 he would not suffer his men so much 
as to touch anything belonging to the Church, "for fear of of- 
fending Saint Martin," and shortly afterwards he paid large 
sums into the treasury of the basilica in gratitude for the vic- 
tory of Vouille and the death of Alaric II, both of these events 
being wholly attributed to Martin's interest at the court of 
heaven. On this occasion, however, if tradition is to be be- 
lieved, the Saint was not so easily satisfied. When the King 
had mounted his war horse to ride away he found to his amaze- 
ment that the animal would not stir. The omen was duly in- 
terpreted, the King paid more money and was finally allowed 
to depart, remarking drily as he did so that, "though Saint 
Martin was a powerful ally, he was very high in his charges." 

8 



TOURS 

With each succeeding age the veneration paid to the rehcs 
of the Saint increased. Pilgrims and penitents of every degree 
and from all over Europe flocked to the tomb, while occasion- 
ally the basilica was made the scene of events of national impor- 
tance. It was there, for instance, that Charlemagne met the 
chief men of his realm in the spring of the year 800 to arrange 
for a provisional division of the State among his three sons. 
He was detained at Tours more than a month by the illness 
and death of his third wife, Hildegarde, who was buried in 
St. Martin's in the north transept. A tower which was after- 
wards built over the spot has always been called from this, 
"La Tour Charlemagne." 

Already, under the Merovingian kings, it had become cus- 
tomary to carry the chape or cope of St. Martin into battle 
before the hosts to insure victory, this national "palladium" be- 
ing, as was believed, one half of the cloak shared with the beg- 
gar of Amiens.^ 

The more Saint Martin increased in honor the greater the 
wealth that flowed in at his shrine, and the more numerous 
the privileges granted to the chapter. Under Charles the Bald 
(848) the office of Abbot of St. Martin's was secularized. At 
first in the gift of the crown, it became hereditary among the 
descendants of Hugh Capet, and for many ages each succeed- 
ing king of France came to Tours to be initiated as abbot with 
magnificent ceremonial. Louis XVI was the last to go through 
this rite. 

Every such event left its mark in rich gifts, so that by the 

iThe words "chapel" and "chaplain" ensign of France, the cope of St. Martin 
are derived from the names given to the was lost sight of. Two churches, how- 
oratory in which the chape was kept and ever, St. Oliviet, in the diocese of Or- 
the clerics especially appointed to serve leans, and Bussy-St. -Martin in the dio- 
it. After the Capetan kings had adopted cese of Maux, still possess relics which 
the standard of St. Denis as the royal are said to be portions of it. 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

XVIth century, before the Huguenots pillaged it (1562), the 
basilica of St. Martin was reputed to be one of the richest and 
most splendid in all Christendom.^ Disastrous as was the 
damage wrought by the Huguenots, the building at least re- 
mained and, more important still, the relics of the Saint. The 
final blow fell in 1790 when the Revolutionists broke into the 
basilica, pillaged it, violated the tombs, and turned it into a 
stable for a regiment of cavalry. A sacristan contrived to 
save a part of the skull and one arm-bone of Saint Martin, 
and these are now preserved in the modern church. 

In 1798 the building was condemned, and in spite of the 
most lively protests from the citizens, who offered to pay for 
its restoration themselves, it was blown up on St. Martin's 
day, nth November. The materials were divided into lots 
and sold, and the rue des Halles was extended through the 
site. All that is left to-day of the famous basilica are the two 
towers, la Tour Charlemagne, and la Tour de I'Horloge, which 
we see forlornly rearing themselves like the masts of a sunken 
vessel above the sea of roofs and gables that form the busiest 
and most bustling quarter of modern Tours. With the dis- 
covery of the tomb in i860 the cult of Saint Martin was sol- 
emnly re-inaugurated, and a new basilica was raised as nearly 
on the original site as the altered plan of the city would allow. 

At an early day buildings of many sorts had sprung up 
about the shrine ; houses for the canons, inns and hospitals for 
pilgrims, monasteries, and an extraordinary number of 
churches; a whole new town in itself, connected with Tours 
by the Roman road leading west to Angers. In the Xth cen- 

iThe Huguenots were not, however, of money for his pleasures and his wars, 

the first to lay violent hands upon the carried off a magnificent silver grill with 

treasures of St. Martin's. The most which Louis XI had enclosed the shrine, 

Catholic King, Francis I, always in want and had it melted down into coin. 

10 



THE TOUR CHARLEMAGNE, BELONGING TO THE ANCIENT 
BASILICA OF ST. MARTIN OF TOURS 



II 



TOURS 

tury, with the constant dread of the Normans hanging over 
it, this community built a wall of defence of its own, and was 
called Chateauneuf. Under Louis XI the two towns, with 
the interlying suburbs, were enclosed within a common line 
of fortifications and the whole from that time went by the name 
of Tours/ 

Scattered thickly through the narrow streets of what was 
Chateauneuf, one still comes upon traces of that wonderful old 
ecclesiastical city where nearly every building depended in 
some sort upon the basilica. When Fulk Nerra, Count of An- 
jou, set fire to it in 994 twenty-two churches and chapels are 
said to have been injured. A few of these, not of course the 
original fabrics, have been restored, as the church of St. Sa- 
turnin, formerly Les Carmes, and Notre Dame la Riche,^ but 
most of the buildings have either disappeared outright or have 
only survived to be put to base uses. The chapel, for example, 
in the rue du Petit St. Martin, that marks the spot where the 
Saint's body was deposited the night it was brought back 
from Candes, is a storage-room for old furniture, and the Xllth 
century church of St. Denis is the stable of the Hotel de la 
Croix Blanche. Here and there a bit of carving, a pointed 
window or door-way, the graceful span of an arch, starts sud- 
denly up in pathetic beauty, and proclaims itself, from the wall 
of the shop or ware-house into which it has been incorporated, 
to be all that remains of a building erected in the XHIth or 
XlVth century, or, it may be, at the very height of the Renais- 

^ About the year 480 Csesarodunum be- Dame la Pauvre, the name was changed 

came a part of the kingdom of Aquitaine to "la Riche" when the church was re- 

and thereafter was called Turonia. built in the Xlth century. The present 

2 Built on the site of the first Chris- church, dating from 1563, was entirely 

tian cemetery, the traditional burial-place restored in the XlXth century, 
of Saint Gatien, Originally called Notre 

13 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

sance. Among the complete disappearances perhaps the most 
to be regretted is that of the original church of St. Saturnin, 
the parish church of the aristocracy and the wealthy bour- 
geoisie of the early XVIth century. It contained, among many 
other splendid tombs, that carved by the Justes for Thomas 
Bohier and his wife, Katherine Brigonnet, the builders of 
Chenonceaux. They, together with most of the other rich 
bourgeois of their day, sleep beneath the busy rue de Com- 
merce, in what was once the cemetery of the church. The 
building, which possessed besides its tombs a magnificent altar 
screen carved by Michael Colombe, and a clock-tower built by 
Cardinal Brigonnet for the town clock, was totally destroyed 
by the Revolutionists in 1798. 

It was from St. Saturnin's that the curfew was rung in 
the XlVth century at seven o'clock in winter and at eight in 
summer — broad daylight. Every one was then expected to go 
home at once, extinguish his light, and get to bed. Another 
XlVth century ordinance required all work to cease at 
vespers on Saturday; any one failing to obey could either pay 
a fine to the Church, or appear publicly on five consecutive 
Sundays clad only in shirt and drawers, and with the offend- 
ing implement of labor hung about his neck. Still another 
ruling of the authorities of that day might be revived now 
with immense advantage. The beggars, we are told, had be- 
come such a pest in Tours in 1350 that an order was issued 
punishing a first ofifense with imprisonment, a second with the 
pillory, and after that, should the beggar persist, he was to 
be branded on the forehead with a hot iron and banished from 
the province. 

The chief charm of this part of Tours lies in the narrow, 
twisting streets, noisy with the clamor of wooden shoes and 

14 



TOURS 

high-pitched voices ; the quaint nomenclature, as, the street ''of 
the Angels," of the "Four Winds," of the "Swan," the "Basket 
of Flowers," or the "Flying Serpent"; and above all in the 
extraordinarily steep gables of the XVth century timber 
houses, into the plaster of which small bricks and slates are 
introduced in an endless variety of decorative patterns. 

Glancing through almost any half-open gate-way one may 
snatch glimpses of a sunny, flagged court, surrounded by ir- 
regular masses of building; flowers flame from carved Re- 
naissance windows, the gnarled trunk and thick foliage of a 
wistaria-vine climb the stone wall, and an old woman, in black 
gown and snowy cap, fills her copper vessel at an ancient well. 
Some flute-like notes float down the narrow street and a lad 
advances dressed in long blue blouse and playing on a pipe, 
close about him presses his little herd of goats. People come 
to their doors with bowls and jugs; the piper pauses, milks 
his goat into a measure, and passes on, while the purchaser, 
as like as not, drains off his glass before re-entering. Life is 
open and confiding among these cheerful people; many occu- 
pations which we are wont to look upon as purely domestic 
are here pursued quite frankly upon the pavement. 

There is still in the old Chateauneuf one XlVth century 
brick and stone house which, though used as a tenement, is 
in excellent preservation. It is the house on the rue Brigonnet 
to which the popular fancy has attached the name of Louis 
Xlth's hangman, Tristan I'Hermite. A sculptured cord, some 
rusty nails driven into the fagade, and a formidable-looking 
iron hook at the top of the stair tower are all that can be shown 
in support of this theory, and are hardly convincing. A certain 
Pierre de Puy may have built it; he was, at all events, the 
owner in 1495, and the words Pries Dieu Pur carved over 

15 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

a window in the court-yard are thought to be an anagram on 
his name. Near this window is an ancient stone well and on 
the other side a spiral stair leads to a lofty loggia from whence, 
across the huddle of roofs and gables of every angle and pitch 
of steepness, one can see the broad bed of the Loire and the 
hillsides beyond. This house, with its spacious court-yard, 
its general air of lightness and grace, its rich carvings, and 
the happy manner in which the stone and brick are combined, 
is an especially striking example of the perfection to which 
domestic architecture had been brought in Touraine before 
any Italian influence had been felt. It belongs wholly to the 
French Renaissance. 

Of the Renaissance buildings of the time of Louis XII and 
Francis I probably the most complete to-day is the Hotel Gouin 
on the rue de Commerce. It dates from the latter part of the 
XVth century, but was restored "in the Italian style" early in 
the XVIth century. It has been in the Gouin family, its pres- 
ent owners, since 1738. Another treasure of the Renaissance 
is the fountain in the Grand Marche given to the town by 
Jacques de Beaune, Baron de Semblengay, Superintendent of 
Finances under Francis I.^ The fountain stood originally in 
a small square done away with in 1778 when the rue Royale» 
now Nationale, was created. It was broken in pieces and 
thrown aside, but in 1820 an enlightened mayor of Tours dis- 
covered and set it up in its present position. When Sem- 
blengay made his gift to the town, monumental public fountains 
were a novelty introduced from Italy after the Italian cam- 
paigns of Charles VIII and Louis XII ; under the latter mon- 
arch a system of canals was inaugurated by means of which 
water from St. Avertin was brought into Tours. 

^ See p. 300. 
16 




HOUSE OF TRISTAN THE HERMIT, LOUIS XI'S HANGMAN 



TOURS 

' The idea we gather of the manner in which the two towns, 
Chateauneuf and Tours, developed, is a widely differing one. 

Chateauneuf is described as teeming with a bustling, pros- 
perous population who built fine houses, multiplied churches, 
trafficked with the swarms of pilgrims who thronged to the 
shrine of St. Martin, and quarrelled incessantly with their gov- 
erning body, the Chapter of the basilica. 

The people of the older town, on the contrary, quite indiffer- 
ent to the progress of their young rival, dreamed on, occupied 
chiefly with the leisurely rebuilding of their cathedral, and 
acquiescing tranquilly in the rule of their archbishops. This 
contrast seems to have outlived the centuries, and the condi- 
tions that caused it. The magnificent basilica is gone and with 
it those long trains of pilgrims and royal penitents to whom 
Chateauneuf owed its prosperity. The cathedral has been fin- 
ished for centuries and the archbishops, dwelling peacefully 
amidst the trees and flowers of the Archeveche gardens, wield 
but little apparent influence upon the public life of Tours. Yet 
you have not gone fifty yards east of the rue Nationale before 
you are conscious of a subtle change. There are fewer people 
in the streets, less noise, fewer shops ; the occasional passer-by 
moves at a leisurely gait and you are no longer hustled or 
pushed. From above a lofty garden-wall rose-branches nod 
and wave and cast their petals at your feet. The ivy has 
grown there undisturbed for centuries. You can picture the 
garden without going inside; surely it has gravelled walks 
and a fig-tree beneath which the little lonely Felix of Balzac's 
Lys dans la Vallee played with pebbles and consorted with 
his star. 

The streets wind and curve incessantly; now you are follow- 
ing what is evidently the line of a rounding wall of defence: 

19 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

part of the wall is still there and some remains of an ancient 
gate-way; you feel shut in, enclosed, separated from the out- 
side world. Beneath your feet lie the substructures of the 
Roman city, with its huge amphitheatre, its baths and temples, 
a whole forgotten world, a people of whose history and civili- 
zation all impression has utterly passed away. 

The nearer you approach the cathedral the stronger does 
this sensation grow, and a solemn, dream-like stillness seems 
fairly to radiate from the great pile and to transport you back 
to that wonderful age that could conceive and aspire to carry 
out such miracles. St. Gatien's, however, like all other old 
cathedrals, was not the product of a single age, nor was it 
completed on the original plan. 

*Tn the Xllth century there were signs of a general reaction 
against the double, lay and monastic, feudal yoke. It was then 
that populations began to form into communes, and it was then 
also that the great cathedrals were rebuilt on vastly more im- 
posing scales. Into this work the urban populations entered 
with enthusiasm, and the sums placed by the faithful at the 
disposal of their bishops were enormous. From about the year 
1250, however, this ardor cooled; money was soon lacking to 
carry on the buildings which, by the end of the century, either 
came to a stand-still or were only finished through the indi- 
vidual efforts of the bishop or chapter."^ 

The building which eventually developed into the Tours 
cathedral was originally a private dwelling, the house of a 
senator of Csesarodunum which Saint Martin's predecessor, 
Saint Lidoire, converted into a place of worship in the IVth 
century. This church, dedicated to Saint Maurice, was re- 
built first in the Vlth century by the historian-bishop, Gregory 

^ Larousse. 
20 



TOURS 

of Tours ^ ( 544-595 )» and again in 1130. Thirty-eight years 
later it was burned to the ground, one of those catastrophes 
which, as has been said, destroyed so many cathedrals at a 
moment so peculiarly opportune as to suggest that they may 
have been less the result of accident than of an over-mastering 
desire to rebuild in the newly developed gothic style of 
architecture.^ 

The Tours cathedral began magnificently. In the course of 
the first eighty years the apse, with its three chapels, and the 
choir were completed. Uceuvre d'un esprit rassis, qui pos- 
sede d fond son art, Viollet-le-Duc calls it. These still pre- 
serve intact a series of gorgeous windows whose glowing col- 
ors seem like reflections of the masses of poppies and lupins 
that stain the fertile fields of Touraine. 

After this the work progressed ever more and more deli- 
berately. "As endless as St. Maurice's" came to be a saying 
in the province. During the building of the transepts, at the 
end of the Xlllth and beginning of the XlVth centuries, a 
disaster evidently occurred. The records preserve urgent ap- 
peals for contributions in some sudden emergency. Two great 
flying-buttresses were thrown out on the north side, and a 
stone column was carried up through the centre of the outer 
wall of the north transept, dividing the rose-window in two; 
so admirably is this contrived, however, that it appears almost 
to belong to the original design. 

At length, after a long period when almost nothing was 

1 "The History of Gregory of Tours, at begins in 2>2>7 and breaks off in 591, is 

once civil and religious in character, is the most curious and interesting history 

the work of a man who accepted every- we possess of the formation of the French 

thing that came in his way without ques- monarchy." — E. Giraudet, "Histoire de 

tion; tradition as well as contempora- Tours. 

neous accounts of what happened during 2 See M. Paul Vitry in "Tours, et les 

his own life-time. His Chronicle, which Chateaux de Touraine." 

21 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

done, there came a revival of interest; work on the nave was 
energetically resumed, and by the close of the XVth century 
nothing remained but to finish the towers, already on a level 
with the roof. It was then decided to substitute the lanterns 
just coming into vogue, for the gothic spires of the original 
plan. The north lantern was finished about the year 1507 and 
the other some forty years later. 

The Huguenots, of course, made wild havoc among the carv- 
ings both of the interior and the exterior. There has been 
some restoration of the latter, and one beautiful tomb, which 
chanced to escape both them and the Revolutionists at St. Mar- 
tin's, stands in the south aisle, where it was placed in 1820. 
It is the tomb of three boys and a girl, the four children of 
Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany, all of whom died in in- 
fancy, the first-born alone living to complete his third year. 
The sarcophagus is in the style of the Italian Renaissance, the 
work probably of some of those stone-carvers who followed 
Charles to France after his Italian expedition; but the upper 
part, the figures of the two children, lying side by side envel- 
oped in their long draperies, and the little tender angels kneel- 
ing at head and foot, came from the studio of Michael Colombe 
and were doubtless executed under the master's own eye. It 
is impossible as one leans gazing at the two little forms, chubby, 
serene, so early exempted from their burden of tumultuous life, 
not to indulge in idle speculations as to how it would have been 
had one of those three boys lived and the younger branch of 
the House of Valois had not succeeded. France without a 
pere du peuple, without a Frangois I^^ without the Medician 
Queens and Henry of Navarre! 

This part of Tours does not change, it was finished so long 
ago. Balzac's haunting description of the quarter back of St. 

22 



TOMB OF THE CHILDREN OF CHARLES VIII AND ANNE OF BRITTANY 



TOURS 

Gatien's and the house of Mile. Gamard "resting eternally in 
the shadow of the great cathedral and enveloped in a pro- 
found silence broken only by the clanging of the church-bells, 
the muffled sound of chanting voices and the shrill cries of 
jack-daws perched aloft on the summits of the towers," might 
have been written yesterday. 

Close by the little house under the huge flying-buttress is the 
cloister, all ruined and neglected, its beautiful galleries en- 
closed, its little chapel, belonging to the song school, a lumber- 
room; but still preserving in one corner a spiral stair, carved 
and garlanded in the gracious manner of the Renaissance. 

On the south and close to the cathedral is a part of the old 
Archeveche, with an outside pulpit or tribune from which the 
decisions of the ecclesiastical court of justice were announced. 
Judging from the engravings preserved of it, this pulpit must 
have been charming before it was restored. Above the walls of 
the Archeveche gardens on the other side of the place, rises an 
ancient tower once a part of the Gallo-Roman wall of defence 
of the Illd or IVth century. It was from this tower that the 
archbishops formerly derived their feudal title of baron, and 
it may have been preserved on that account. 

These archbishops of the Middle Ages and the centuries suc- 
ceeding were tremendous personages. One has only to read an 
account of an installation to realize something of the enor- 
mous power, temporal and spiritual, wielded by these great 
princes of the Church. At the state banquet, for instance, 
which the canons and clergy, both of St. Martin's and the ca- 
thedral, attended as guests, the great lords came as feudato- 
ries and performed menial services for which they received 
compensation! The Seigneur de Marmande, who overlooked 
the preparation of the food, received in return all the utensils ; the 

25 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

lord of Amboise set the table and was given the gold and silver 
plate ; the Sieur de I'lle Bouchard washed the new Archbishop's 
hands and received his ring ; he of Usse carved, and was given 
the cutlery and so on. Notwithstanding the perquisites, how- 
ever, the barons finally revolted against the feudal obligation 
implied in these acts and they were abolished. 

The entrance to the Archbishop's garden is on the place 
de I'Archeveche by a monumental gate-way, built out of a 
triumphal arch erected in honor of Louis XIV and taken down 
when the rue Royale, or Nationale, was extended. Sometimes 
this gate stands open and you may see a magnificent cedar 
of Lebanon just within, rising in the middle of a grassy circle, 
but the rest of the big gardens as well as the lower and orig- 
inal part of the feudal tower, will be hidden from you until the 
day that you climb the three hundred and three steps leading 
to the south lantern of St. Gatien's and look down at them 
from above. In the late hours of a summer afternoon, when 
the shadows are beginning to lengthen, and the whole land lies 
bathed in slanting showers of gold, Tours, spread map-wise 
at your feet, presents a scene of quite indescribable loveliness. 
There you shall see the shimmering silver of the Loire, the 
opposite hill-sides crowned with white villas ; the grey old Tour 
de Guise starting up from amid its surrounding bed of foliage, 
the deserted rue de la Psalterie sheer below, over-arched by 
the two mighty flying-buttresses and skirting the cloister and 
song-school ; the quaint old-world court-yard of a near-by con- 
vent, where the sisters, in their white woolen gowns and flap- 
ping caps, hasten back and forth domestically occupied with 
pots and sauce-pans; the square tower of St. Julien's and be- 
yond it those two other great towers of old St. Martin's which 
harmonize so admirably with the dome of the modern basilica ; 

26 



TOURS 

and the verdant masses of the squares and boulevards, and 
the gardens — the garden of I'hotel de M. le General, of the 
Prefecture, of FArcheveche and of the Petit Seminaire. 
In the Archeveche, the nearest of all, are pleasant, shady 
walks, flower beds, groves of ancient trees and long, straight 
terraces laid out on the summits of the massive and lofty 
walls of defence of old Turonia. All about you stretches 
a wilderness of grey sculptured stone; grim gargoyles start 
from beneath your feet, and even there, close to the sky as it 
seems, where none but chance tourists ever stray, is the same 
luxuriance of carving, the same abandonment and wealth of 
detail that appeared so marvellous in the lower and frequented 
parts of the cathedral. 

You will linger long, and carry away with you a memory 
that not years or distance shall efface. 



27 



MARMOUTIER 
THE TOUR DE GUISE 

PLESSIS-LES-TOURS 
ST. PIERRE DES CORPS 



CHAPTER II 

TOURS {Continued); MARMOUTIER; THE TOUR DE GUISE; 
PLESSIS-LES-TOURS ; ST. PIERRE DES CORPS 

WHEN Saint Martin became Bishop of Tours his 
"palace" was a httle hut alongside the primitive 
church. Its only furniture was a wooden stool 
and the earth served him for a bed. Rude and ascetic as these 
surroundings were, the dwelling was nevertheless situated in 
the very heart of the noisy, bustling Roman city, and close to 
the baths and amphitheatre, and the new Bishop, fresh from 
his hermit life in the valley of Liguge, felt the stir and confu- 
sion to be intolerable. On the other side of the river, a mile 
or two above the town, he found some of those caves hewn 
out of the rock such as the inhabitants along the banks of the 
Loire use as dwellings to this day, and there he established a 
retreat for himself and his followers, which quickly developed 
into a monastery under the name of Marmoutier — Ma jus Mo- 
nasterium — and became in time one of the most famous 
religious houses in France. 

It was here that Pope Urban II stayed in 1096, when he 
came to preside over the Council of Tours; and on Sunday, 
9 March, he preached the first Crusade from a platform erected 
on the river-bank to an enormous multitude. Fulk le Jeune, 
Count of Anjou and Touraine, was among those who took the 
Cross and received the papal blessing. 

31 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

In the period of Marmoutier's greatest opulence, that is, 
the Xlth-XIIIth centuries, a magnificent abbey church was 
erected with monastic buildings and a fortified enclosing wall; 
of these the Revolution has left nothing except a very striking 
bit of feudal architecture, the lower part of a square tower and 
the Portail de la Crosse, as it is called, through which none but 
the mitred abbot of Marmoutier might pass, built in 1220 by 
the then abbot, Hughes des Roches. 

In the XlXth century Marmoutier passed into the hands of 
the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. They put up extensive and 
ugly buildings and conducted a large Pensionnat de Jeunes 
Filles. Under the law of 7 July, 1904, however, this has been 
closed,* and it is now quite melancholy to wander through the 
neglected gardens and dismantled chapels while the concierge, 
a dear old lady with rosy cheeks and a stifif white cap, pours 
out a dirge-like recital of all the departed grandeurs. 

You climb up and down little flights of steep stone steps, and 
visit the grottoes and the caves of Saint Martin and Saint 
Brice — "a great sinner, but glorious in his repentance" — and 
of the seven brethren, all members of the community, who, 
dying upon the same day, preserved so life-like an appearance 
that they were called the Seven Sleepers ; but all of these places 
have been fitted up with altars and images and artificial flowers, 
and having in consequence quite lost their primitive appearance 
are not very repaying. 

You may return from Marmoutier to Tours by the sus- 
pension bridge of St. Symphorien, built upon the site of a very 

^ "Loi relative a la suppression de Ten- autorisees a titre de congregations exclu- 

seignement congreganiste. sivement enseignantes seront supprimees 

"Art. I. — L'enseignement de tout orde dans un delar maximum de dix ans," 

et de toute nature est interdit en France etc., etc. 
aux Congregations. Les Congregations 

32 



PORTAL OF THE CROSS, ABBEY OF MARMOUTIER 



MARMOUTIER 

€arly bridge of boats. Crowds of pilgrims on their way to and 
from the shrine of Saint Martin used to pass over this bridge 
and accidents so frequently happened in times of flood that in 
1034 Odo II, Count of Blois and Touraine, pour etre agreable 
a Dieu, utile a la posterite, et sur les instances et les soins de sa 
femme, built a handsome bridge of stone, the first of its class 
in France/ The substructures of this bridge can still be seen 
just below the surface of the water a little up-stream. King 
Henry I exempted the new bridge in perpetuity from all tolls, 
a privilege which does not, however, extend to its successor. 

On the south. Count Odo's bridge was defended by a massive 
round tower, built on Gallo-Roman foundations and forming 
later on a part of the fortifications of the royal chateau. This 
tower, which is still standing, has gone by the name of the Tour 
de Guise ever since the young Duke of Guise hardily escaped 
from it three years after his father's murder at Blois, 23 Decem- 
ber, 1588. The Duke had attended Mass on Assumption Day, 
1 591, and on his return he proposed to his guards a race to 
the top of this tower. Readily outstripping them, he gained 
his own apartment, closed and barred a heavy door which 
had been especially constructed to prevent his escape, and 
making fast one end of a rope which had been slipped in 
among his clothes by the washerwoman, he slid down from 
the window. 

The alarm had been given and he was fired upon; he fell 
fifteen feet, lost his hat and injured one knee, yet he man- 
aged to flee swiftly along the deserted strip of sand between 
the river and the town-wall, pursued all the while by the per- 
sistent cries of an old woman who kept shrilling: "The Guise 
is running away! The Guise is running away!" 

^The bridge of Avignon, sometimes cited as the first long stone bridge in 
France, dates only from 1170. 

35 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

Meeting a miller leading his horse to water, he leaped upon 
the animal's back and rode quickly off while the owner stood 
stupidly staring after him; but his next encounter threatened 
for a moment to put an end to the adventure. There suddenly 
swung into view, riding rapidly toward him, an armed and 
mounted soldier, who halted, blocking the way. Mistaking 
him for one of the castle guards sent to intercept him, the Duke, 
without waiting for the other to speak, offered to surrender 
and return to the chateau. 

"Why, who are you?" stammered the man, gazing at him 
blankly. The Duke told him, whereupon to his utter stupe- 
faction the soldier hastily dismounted, saluted, and insisted on 
giving him his horse, a better one than the miller's. It turned 
out that he was an old member of the League.^ The Duke 
got safely away and the Governor of the chateau expended his 
activity in securely walling up the window from which the 
prisoner escaped. 

The Tour de Guise, as has been said, was once a part of the 
royal chateau, built, or, at all events, greatly added to, by 
Henry II, King of England, and hereditary Count of An- 
jou, whose ancestors had likewise added Touraine to their 
domains. 

"No other one of its rulers," writes a modern historian,^ 
"count, duke or king, rendered more eminent services to Tours, 
or better deserved the gratitude of its people." He fortified 
several of the suburbs, built bridges, constructed roads, pro- 
tected the town from roving bands of freebooters, founded 
several abbeys, built or repaired a number of churches and 
the royal chateau, and made generous gifts to the hospitals. 

1 See p. 48. 

2 M. Ch. V. Langlois, in Lavisse's Histoire de la France. Vol. Ill, part I. 

36 



THE TOUR DE GUISE 

During a terrible famine in 1176 he for three months fed up- 
wards of ten thousand persons at his own cost. 

Loyalty to her Angevin rulers cost Tours dear in the end, 
however, for throughout all the period of struggle before the 
Plantagenet kings of England were definitely driven from the 
continent, the citizens of Tours had a miserable time of it. 
A letter written in 1209 speaks of the "scourge of war that 
has again fallen upon us. Misfortunes of every kind and sort 
have utterly effaced the beauty and prosperity of our city. 
Tours, once so rich, so gay and populous, is reduced to such a 
condition that on all sides you see nothing but poverty, wretch- 
edness and misery." 

This unhappy state of things continued, moreover, through- 
out most of the period of the English wars. Isabelle of Bavaria 
made Tours the seat of her intrigues against her own son, the 
Dauphin, afterwards Charles VII, and was for a time confined 
in the chateau. Feigning a desire to go into retreat at Mar- 
moutier, she notified the Duke of Burgundy, who promptly ap- 
peared with a strong force and carried her off to Paris. ^ 

In 141 6 Touraine was given to the Dauphin in appanage 
and the year after his accession (1422) he bestowed it upon 
his Queen, Marie of Anjou, as an "advance on her dowry." 
It was soon taken away again, however, and given to Archibald, 
Earl of Douglas, who was created Duke of Touraine as a 
reward for his services against the English. The townspeople 
appear to have accepted this transfer with satisfaction, and 
the corps de ville resolved to make their new Duke a gift 
"in which every one should have a part." They voted him, 
accordingly, ten pipes of wine, six "muids," or wagon-loads, 
of hay, a hundred pounds of wax, fifty sheep, and four fat oxen. 

1 See p. 122. 

37 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

Douglas made his state entry on the 7th May, 1424, by the 
Porte de la Riche ; the keys of the town were presented to him, 
all the streets through which he passed were richly decorated, 
and four prominent bourgeois were appointed to precede him 
as far as Loches, his next stopping place. He did not enjoy 
his new possession long, however, for he was killed three months 
later (17th August, 1424) at the battle of Verneuil. Touraine 
then passed to the Duke of Anjou. 

With the exception of the Tour de Guise and one or two 
other towers, all incorporated in the Guise barracks, the old royal 
chateau has completely disappeared. After Charles Vllth's 
time the sovereigns lived there but rarely, preferring, when 
they came to Tours, to stay at the palace built by Louis XI 
at Montils on the outskirts of the town. 

It was, however, at the old chateau that Louis celebrated his 
marriage with Margaret of Scotland, a daughter of James I 
and Joan Beaufort. The bride made her entry into Tours on 
horseback on 24th June, 1436. Alighting at the gate of the 
chateau, she was escorted by the Duke of Vendome on the one 
hand and the Earl of Orkney on the other, followed by her 
Scottish suite, to the Grand'Salle. Here the kind-hearted 
Queen advanced to meet the poor little Princess, so strange 
and forlorn in her new surroundings, and taking her in her 
arms embraced and kissed her. Presently the Dauphin, who 
had waited in another room, entered with a group of nobles 
and cavaliers, and the two, who now met for the first time, 
s'entrehaiserent et ac c oiler ent ; after which the Queen took 
them into her own room and amused them till supper-time. 

The next day the marriage ceremony took place in the cathe- 
dral. The King, Charles VII, arrived while the bride was 
being dressed and went at once to her room. He had been 

38 



FACADE OF CHATEAU OF PLESSIS-LES-TOURS 



THE TOUR DE GUISE 

extremely anxious for the match, which was to secure for him 
the aid of Scotland against the English, and is said to have 
been moult joyeux et hien content de sa personne. The Queen 
wore a gown of blue velvet on the occasion covered with gold 
ornaments and the young couple were royally attired, but the 
King did not change his travelling dress and attended the cere- 
mony booted and spurred. 

On account of their extreme youth the newly married pair 
were not given a separate establishment until the following 
year and for the present the Dauphine was left under the care 
of the Queen, Marie of Anjou, habitually kind and gentle to 
every one. She treated her little daughter-in-law with extreme 
tenderness, as, indeed, she had need to do, for Louis took an 
instant dislike to her and their relations were miserably un- 
happy. Fortunately she had inherited something of her father's 
tastes, and for a time she solaced herself with books and poetry, 
passing whole nights at the window composing rondeaux. 
Nevertheless, her husband's neglect preyed upon her, she be- 
came melancholy, and some ill-natured remarks of one of the 
courtiers coming to her ears added to her unhappiness. Then 
one August day after a long, hot walk she took a chill, pleurisy 
set in, and having apparently neither the wish nor the strength 
to go on living, she died a few days later (i6 August, 1445). 

"Life?" cried the unhappy young Princess to the pitying 
courtiers and ladies who stood about her bed. "Life? Fie! 
Let me hear no more of it !" 

The King and Queen took their daughter-in-law's death 
greatly to heart. The Queen became ill from la desplaisance 
et travail que elle eust a cause de la maladie et mort de madicte 
dame la Dauphine, and Charles left Chalons, where she died, 
soudainement comme dolent, courrouce et trouble; but we 

41 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

do not hear of any grief on the part of the Dauphin, whose 
neglect was the chief cause of her death. Margaret is de- 
scribed by her contemporaries as being beautiful, accomplished 
and gentle, too gentle, perhaps ; Louis's coarse nature required 
coarse treatment. She was twenty-two when she died and had 
been married nine years. 

In 1463 Louis bought for himself — King of France, Duke of 
Touraine, etc., etc., his heirs and successors, the domain of 
Montiz-les-Tours from Touchard de Maille, seigneur of the 
neighboring chateau of Maille. The only dwelling, a ruined 
and abandoned old keep, was pulled down, and in its place 
Louis built the famous chateau of Plessis-les-Tours, his favorite 
residence for the remainder of his life. It consisted of two 
large courts, the outer one surrounded by the stables and the 
lodgings of the Scottish Guard, and the inner one by the royal 
and state apartments, the offices, and the quarters of the house- 
hold. At the upper end of this second court was a beautiful 
arcaded gallery, something like the one at Blois, for which it 
served as model. Three lines of fortified walls and as many 
deep moats surrounded the whole. 

All that is left of these extensive buildings is a part of the 
east wing containing the chamber in which Louis died, the 
Guard room handsomely and tastefully restored by the present 
owner. Dr. Chaumie,^ and the tower with its wide and imposing 
spiral stair. At what was the extreme southwest angle of the 
building are the remains of a former Guard room, where some 
holes in the wall and under the stairs are pointed out as being 
respectively the cells of Cardinal la Balue and Philippe de 

^ This room is being fitted up by Dr. Chaumie as a museum for objects con- 
nected with Louis XI and his period. 
42 



PLESSIS-LES-TOURS 

Commines, neither of whom, however, was confined at Plessis- 
les-Tours/ Yet another opening is described as an "oubHette."^ 

There is, indeed, httle left to recall the formidable chateau 
described by Sir Walter in "Quentin Durward," with its tur- 
reted and battlemented walls, its triple moat fenced with iron 
palisades, its fortified towers and donjon-keep, and traps and 
pitfalls for the unwary. A pleasant garden overruns the spot 
whereon these things stood, vegetables flourish in the lines of 
the ancient moats, and even the ruins have been carted away 
to provide the neighboring hamlet with building materials. 
The one wing that remains is far more smiling than severe. 
It is built of light stone and mellow brick. Carved, ornamented, 
graceful, harmonious, Plessis-les-Tours ushered in the best 
period of that charming style of domestic architecture that was 
invented and developed in Touraine. 

"From that time the formula was found. Details of deco- 
ration might change, but the character of the whole, of the 
details themselves, of the construction, the gables, windows, 
dormers, corbelled tourelles, and open stairs, remains the same 
for the next seventy or eighty years, and the type created by 
our architects in the second third of the XVth century was 
destined to endure for long and to keep alive French traditions 
in spite of the new styles introduced from beyond the moun- 
tains."=^ 

The eastward-looking room in which the King died has 
large windows admitting plenty of light and air, and at one 
side there is a huge fire-place. As the end approached, Louis 
became ever more and more suspicious, and would have none 

1 See p. 73. ^ "Tours et les chateaux de Touraine," 

2 See p. 81. Paul Vitry. 

43 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

but persons of low station about him, people who had every- 
thing to lose by his death and nothing to gain. Even Anne de 
Beaujeu, his favorite child, was sent away and the young 
Dauphin was kept strictly at Amboise. A single exception 
was Philippe de Commines, the historian, who had gained the 
King's confidence; he remained with him to the last and has 
left a graphic account of the closing scenes/ On 25th August, 
1483, the King's malady had taken so serious a turn that he 
was obliged to keep his bed, but he never ceased to issue com- 
mands and directions, maintaining a firm grip on all the affairs 
of the kingdom. He commanded Masses to be said for his 
soul in every parish, sent splendid presents to the most notable 
shrines, ordered processions — melant a ses prieres des instruc- 
tions politiqnes, il parla, parla toujours jusqu' au monient oti 
la mort vient lui fermer les levres. 

Commines says: ''In all his life-time he had given com- 
mandement to all his servants, as well my selfe as others, that 
when we should see him in danger of death, we should onely 
moove him to confesse himselfe and dispose of his conscience, 
not sounding in his eares this dreadfull word Death, knowing 
that he should not be able patiently to heare that cruell sen- 
tence."^ 

Notwithstanding this order, when it was seen that the end 
was drawing near, some of his attendants conceived it to be 
their duty to inform the King. His tyrannical doctor, James 
Cottier, who, Commines says, received ten thousand crowns a 

* Philippe de Commines was a native standard authority for the reign of 

of Flanders. At first attached to the Louis XI. 

Duke of Burgundy, he left him to take ^ "The History of Commines." Eng- 

service with Louis, on whose death, lished by Thomas Danett. Vol. IL p. 

after a brief period of disgrace, he was 107, et seq. The Tudor Translations, 

received into favor at the court of Edited by W. E. Henley. XVII. 
Charles VIII. His Memoires are the 

44 



CHATEAU OF PLESSIS-LES-TOURS 



PLESSIS-LES-TOURS 

month to keep his master alive, was selected for the task. He 
acquitted himself of it rudely. 

"Sir," said he, "it is reason we do our duties, hope no more 
in this holie man,^ nor in any other thing, for sure you are but 
dead: therefore think upon your conscience for your hower 
is come. . . ." 

"Thus you see," says Con^mines, "how indiscreetly his death 
was signified to him. . . . Five or sixe dais before his 
death he had all men in suspition, especially all that were 
woorthie of credit and authoritie, yea, he grew jealous of his 
owne Sonne, and caused him to be straightly guarded, neither 
did any man see him or speake with him but by his commande- 
ment." 

Commines likewise recounts the extreme measures taken by 
Louis to protect his own person, how the Scottish archers kept 
watch by night and day, and the strict examination of all who 
came or went, with the constant changes made in the royal 
household. From all of which he deduces the extraordinary 
conclusion that the King's terror and misery "is to be accounted 
as a punishment God gave him in this world to ease him in the 
world to come. . . . After all these feares, sorrowes, and 
suspicions, God (according to his accustomed goodness) 
wrought a miracle upon him, healing him both in soule and 
bodie: for he tooke him out of this miserable world, being 
perfect in sense, understanding and memorie, having received 
all his sacraments without all griefe to man's judgement, and 
talking continually even within a Pater Noster while of his 
death so he gave order for his funerall, and named those that 

1 Saint Francois de Paul, whom Louis off death. The ruins of the Minimes 
had sent for to Italy in the hope that the convent which he established at Plessis- 
prayers of so great a Saint might ward les-Tours are still seen in the grounds. 

47 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

should accompanie his bodie to the grave; saying ever, that he 
trusted to die on no day but Saturday, and that our Ladie, 
in whom he had ever put his confidence, and alwaies devoutly 
served, had purchased him this grace, and sure so it happened : 
for he ended his life upon Saturday the 30 of August in the 
yeere 1483, at eight of the clocke at night, in the said castell 
of Plessis, where he fell sicke the Monday before. His soule, 
I trust, is with God, and resteth in his blessed realme of para- 
dise." 

After the death of Louis XI Plessis-les-Tours was only in- 
habited by French sovereigns during their rare and brief visits 
to Tours. Charles VIII spent most of his short reign at Am- 
boise, and Louis XII preferred his hereditary chateau at Blois. 
Henry III, however, when driven out of Paris by the League,^ 
and with only Tours, Blois and Beaugency remaining to him, 
came to Plessis-les-Tours in March, 1589, and opened his parlia- 
ment in the capitulary hall of the Abbey of St. Julien's in the 
town. On the 30th of the following month the King and Henry 
of Navarre had their famous interview in the garden of Plessis, 
at which they entered into an alliance against the League. The 
royal and the Huguenot troops joined forces and marched to- 
gether to put down the rebellion at Paris, then in the hands 
of the Leaguers, taking a number of towns on the way. On 
I August the King was assassinated at St. Cloud by a fanatical 
monk named Jacques Clement. The King of Navarre, now 
free to fight his way to the throne, continued to hold parlia- 

^The League was devised by the and preservation of the Catholic, 

Guises against Henry III and to prevent Apostolic and Roman religion ; and for 

the succession from passing to Henry the extirpation of heresy in France and 

of Navarre, the aspirant favored by the the Netherlands." It excluded the 

King. It was termed by its founders a "heretic Bourbons" from the throne, and 

"holy league, offensive, defensive and named the foolish Cardinal de Bourbon 

perpetual, for the sole teaching, defence as successor to Henry III. 

48 



( 



ST. PIERRE DES CORPS 

ments in the abbey of St. Julien's till his abjuration of protes- 
tantism (25th July, 1593) opened the gates of Paris to him. 

This historic hall is still standing in Tours on the north of 
the church, but in a dilapidated condition. The present church, 
dating from the Xlllth century, was badly injured during the 
Revolution, but was restored by public subscription in the last 
century. The altar, furnishings and glass are all modern, but 
many of the carved capitals of the pillars in the nave and the 
triforium are ancient and well preserved. At the west end 
of the nave, behind the organ loft, some traces of Xlth and 
Xllth century paintings can be seen through the triforium 
arches. They are on the wall of a square tower rising outside 
the church proper, all that remains of an earlier building. 

St. Julien's, lying between Chateauneuf and Tours, was a 
very old foundation, the nucleus of a settlement important 
enough to have a defensive wall of its own before it, together 
with all the other outlying communities, was gathered into the 
united town in the XVth century. 

Another of these suburbs was St. Pierre des Corps, so named 
because it occupied the site of an old Roman cemetery on the 
east of the cathedral. Progress has not moved in this direction 
and it is a suburb still, quaint, picturesque, deserted, but reached 
by one of the most charming strolls in Tours. Beyond the 
shady quay, where no one seems ever to go, lie the wide, tranquil 
stretches of the Loire ; the houses, the further you advance, grow 
ever older and older, the gables steeper, the roofs more mellow, 
more lichen-grown, more irregular. Now and again the side- 
streets fade into mere alley-ways, or end abruptly in court- 
yards surrounded by wooden galleries black with age and 
reached by carved outside stairs. In this region, too, the 
flowers seem to grow with peculiar exuberance; every window 

49 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

is gay with them, while even the Httle pine-trees projected 
crookedly into the narrow street to proclaim the presence of a 
wine-shop, though long since dead and dry, have faded into 
a rich, deep brown. 

Passing the quaint, sunken church of St. Pierre des Corps, 
with its rows of irregular gables, one comes upon a tiny cottage 
in the rue Avisseau, almost hidden by its garden wall and 
thick masses of ivy. A tablet tells that here Avisseau, the 
rediscoverer of the art of Bernard Palissy, was born in 1796. 
The story is as follows : 

Avisseau was a simple workman, a potter employed in the 
manufacture and decoration of ordinary earthen-ware vessels; 
but all the time, as he fashioned his crocks and sauce-pans, his 
head was filled with visions of the beautiful pottery of the 
XVIth century, until at length it became the fixed dream of 
his life to discover the lost secrets of Palissy's art. Lured on 
by this ambition, he studied chemistry, pored over old books 
and manuscripts, kept many a weary vigil, denied himself many 
a necessity. At last, after twenty years of patient experi- 
menting, he had succeeded in reproducing all of Palissy's colors 
but the red; that, the most important of all, still eluded him. 
Then, one day, as he hung over his crucible, it suddenly flashed 
into his mind that what was needed was gold. He gazed about 
him despairingly. Gold! Where was he to get enough even 
to prove himself right? His wife had been standing by silently 
watching him. "Here," said she quietly, "take this!" And 
drawing ofif her wedding-ring she handed it to him. This 
little act of self-denial so simply done set the crown upon her 
husband's labors; the experiment was successful and Avis- 
seau's name will ever continue to be held in honor among the 
Tourangeaux so long as they continue to produce those beautiful 
and glowing faiences of which he revealed the secret. Some 

50 




VIEW OF TOURS CATHEDRAL, STONE BRIDGE ACROSS THE LOIRE 



ST. PIERRE DES CORPS 

of Avisseau's own work can be seen in the Tours Museum; 
wonderfully life-like representations of fish, displayed upon 
oblong platters garnished with little carrots and turnips, and 
dishes of fruit in which the color and form, even the texture 
of the originals, are marvellously reproduced. 

In 1682 a street called the rue Traversaine was opened, run- 
ning north and south through the center of Tours. It soon 
became a popular thoroughfare and in 1765 plans were made 
to widen and extend it on the south, and to continue it on the 
north by throwing a bridge of stone across the Loire, starting 
at its southern extremity from a fine open square ornamented 
with gardens and statues and public buildings. 

The bridge, with its twenty-seven stone arches, was finished 
in eleven years, and the work of widening the street, whose 
name, changed then to Royale, has since become Nationale, was 
helped forward by the action of the Municipality, who under- 
took to rebuild the facades of all the houses up to the second 
story. No. 39 of this modernized street is the birthplace of 
Balzac. It is marked by a bust and an inscription, and you 
may read the one and observe the other twenty times a day 
in passing and never feel convinced. No literary association 
is to be evoked from that ordinary-looking house which, with 
its ordinary fellows, seems entirely at home among the neigh- 
boring shops and hotels, the Credit Lyonnais, and the "Grand 
Bazaar." 

Facing the Pont de Pierre are twin buildings in the style of 
Louis XVI. One of these is the Museum, while the other is 
to receive the Town Library so soon as the completion of the 
elaborate new Hotel de Ville at the other end of the rue 
Nationale shall drive it from its present unimposing but emi- 
nently pleasant quarters. 

The Library of Tours was founded after the Revolution, 

53 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

mainly on the libraries of suppressed religious houses, and con- 
sequently is especially rich in theological works. It possesses 
many rare editions and early examples of printing, among 
others the Mainz Bible, 1462, as well as upwards of twelve 
hundred valuable manuscripts. Among its treasures are the 
beautifully painted and embossed Livres d'Heures of Charles V 
and of Anne of Brittany, and the so-called "Charlemagne 
Bible," a copy of the Four Evangels inscribed in letters of gold 
of the most exquisite workmanship, the entire two hundred 
and seventy leaves being perfect. It was upon this volume 
that the Kings of France when inducted as Abbots of St. Mar- 
tin's took the oath to preserve the rights, prerogatives and 
privileges of the Chapter. 

And this brings us back once more to those early days when 
the first basilica dedicated to Saint Martin was still standing, 
when kings poured in their gifts at his shrine, and when 
Touraine was the rich prize over which the neighboring Counts 
of Blois and of Anjou fought and struggled away their lives ; 
and it is to Loches, the fastness of this latter House, that we 
now turn. 



54 



LOCHES 



CHAPTER III 



LOCHES 



THE chateau of Loches stands on the Indre, about thirty 
miles south of Tours, and the road, shortly after 
passing the village of Montbazon, follows the left 
bank of the stream for the rest of the way. 

Montbazon takes its name from a towering donjon-keep 
which you can see from the train crowning a neighbouring 
height and surmounted in modern times by a colossal figure 
of the Virgin. Dating from the Xlth century, this donjon, 
like all of its fellows in that rough age, was the scene of fighting 
and bloodshed and cruelty, and of long, wasting imprisonments. 
Now, the roof is gone and it is in ruins, but from the summit, 
placed at one angle of the frowning walls, the brooding figure 
of the Mother of Sorrows seems to breathe upon the sun-lit 
valley a peace that can never again be broken. 

As the train draws up at Loches you perceive another town, 
on the right bank. This is Beaulieu, where Fulk Nerra, the 
most famous of the counts of Anjou, founded an Abbey in 
the Xlth century, and where he himself is buried. 

Immediately after leaving the station you have your first 
glimpse of the chateau, a mass of gray walls and pointed towers 
overhanging the town; and the first street on the left, a mere 

6 . 

57 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

passage between ste'eply climbing gabled houses, will lead you 
to its foot. 

After passing under a low archway, the road makes a bend 
to the right and follows the line of the ancient moat directly 
under the towering walls of the citadel on the left, and the 
outer walls of enceinte on the right. 

Here and there clumps of brilliant flowers grow hardily from 
some cranny in the walls where the dust has gathered, thick 
masses of ivy, high overhead, glisten in the sun, and a stream 
of limpid water rushes down over the clean, white stones of 
the gutter. 

The effect of these huge walls of masonry and lofty towers, 
their enormous solidity and dizzy height, and then the utter 
peace, the silence and serenity of the summer day, the perfumed 
air, the shining foliage, the indescribable beauty and pictur- 
esqueness of every stone and angle upon which the eye rests, 
are well-nigh overpowering, and you steal silently up the de- 
serted street like a person in a dream. 

A notice painted beside the gateway at • the top tells how 
M. Cesar, whose garden lies beyond, will show Messieurs et 
Mesdames les touristes the wonderful subterranean galleries 
(by far the most interesting parts of the chateau) which he, 
M. Cesar, had been so fortunate as to discover in 1892. 

Yielding to the seductions of this sign, you push on and find 
the Cesar family apparently still laboring under the excitement 
of the discovery. While Mile, runs to fetch a lantern, Mme., 
standing in the middle of the path, tells you all about it. How 
a German lady came one day and asked to be shown the under- 
ground passages. "But there are none," they told her. Where- 
upon she insisted, she had read about them in an old book and 
they led out in this direction. She, Madame, had not believed 

58 



CHATEAU OF LOCHES : THE WALL OF ENCEINTE AND TOP 

OF TOUR RONDE 



LOCHES 

a word of it, but M. Cesar had said: "Tiens, let us dig!" and 
so he had poked about and dug, and at last one day— Voila! 
he had found some steps and an archway, all choked up, of 
course, but there they were and the galleries just as the German 
lady had said. 

M. Cesar joins jovially in the recital, quite as though it all 
had happened yesterday and this were the first time of 
telling. Then he adds his two words of EngHsh— "Ver.r.ry 
intr. .r. .sting"— and Mile. Cesar comes with the lantern and 
acts as your guide. 

They are indeed interesting, these vaulted passages, wonder- 
fully constructed, with walls as fresh and dry as though but 
lately finished. They connect the citadel with the open country 
beyond, and were used to provision it in times of siege. When 
or why they were walled up as seen to-day is not known. 

As you come out again into the sunshine and sweet air, you 
get your first sight of the donjon, the top of it, frowning darkly 
over the massive tours-a-bec^ of the second wall of enceinte, 
and at once you begin to think of Fulk Nerra. For the person- 
ality of this man, the very embodiment of the dark spirit of 
the feudal age, was so strong that even now, after a period of 
nearly nine centuries has elapsed, his name is a household word 
in Touraine. 

Loches (the word has the same derivation as the Scottish 
"loch") came into Fulk Nerra's family in 886 as the marriage 
portion of the bride of his great-grandfather, the first Count 
of Anjou. Fulk Nerra, violent and ruthless and possessed by 
a devouring ambition, made it the base of his operations in 
a campaign for the conquest of Touraine, which lasted inter- 

^ Rounded towers terminating in front in sharp angles, from which cannon balls 

will glance aside. 

6i 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

mittently throughout most of his Hfe (973-1040) and which 
he bequeathed to his son to complete, and it is generahy be- 
Heved that Fulk built the two square towers which compose 
the donjon. 

The lofty chalk plateau on which it stands commands the 
valley of the Indre, a strong position occupied from earliest 
times by a fortress of some sort. There are, or were, for in 
many places they have disappeared, three lines of enclosing 
walls, and a gateway on the south which has been walled 
up. Through it Marie de Medicis is said to have passed under 
the escort of the Duke of Epernon, the Governor of the castle, 
after her escape from Blois (February, 1619). One of the 
massive supports of the drawbridge is still standing, however, 
and disproves the local tradition that fipernon had the whole 
constructed in the course of a single night in order to facilitate 
the Queen's entry. 

Passing by this gateway you reach the present entrance from 
which a narrow, sunny street leads up to the highest level of 
the plateau, where, at the further end of a thickly planted avenue 
of poplars, a gate admits to the innermost enclosure of the 
citadel and to the immediate and overpowering vicinity of the 
donjon. 

You enter first a low, XlVth century addition built to provide 
a Guard room close to what was formerly the drawbridge and 
main gateway. H^re are some clumsy manger-like construc- 
tions said to be the bedsteads of the Scottish guard. 

In an inner room there is a cell formed by barring off the 
embrasure of a window where, we are told, Philippe de Com- 
mines composed a part of his Memoires. It is not a commodious 
apartment, certainly, but in the matter of light and air, at least, 
it has the advantage over that black closet in the Tower of 

62 



LOCHES 

London in which the Tower warders would have us beheve 
that Raleigh wrote his "History of the World." 

Even in its present ruined and roofless state, the great grey 
mass of the donjon rises to a height of a hundred and twenty 
feet above the ground. The floors are all gone and an outside 
stair leads to a doorway on the second floor, formerly, probably, 
reached only by ladder. The gaping roof lets in plenty of light 
and it is easy to make out the divisions of the different stories, 
the inside stairway, and, high overhead, a little oratory, the 
chapel of Saint Salle-boeuf, whose renown has disappeared even 
more completely than this shrine once dedicated to him. The 
altar is still there and some traces of red and yellow frescoes 
can be seen clinging to the ruined wall. 

Formerly the two towers which compose the donjon had no 
communication below the main floor, but an opening knocked 
in the party-wall of the cellars now enables one to pass through 
to the larger tower. Here, too, the floors have all disappeared ; 
while the massive walls, which shut out the sunlight and pre- 
serve an eternal moisture, have clothed themselves with festoons 
of ferns, of maiden-hair, of delicate trailing vines and velvety 
moss. The light, drifting down from the roofless height, is 
cool and green, the profound silence is broken only by the cries 
of the rooks circling and swooping in black flocks about the 
summit, where, across the deep blue square of sky, white clouds 
drive in quick succession. 

Seen in its present condition, the donjon of Loches is hardly 
a gay or smiling abode ; what then must it have been in the day 
of its prime, with floors and windows intact and depending for 
light and air upon loopholes in those thick walls ! Yet, it was 
no doubt in perfect keeping with the character of its builder. 

Fulk Nerra was one of those persons about whose memory 

63 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

stories and legends inevitably gather. He was one of the 
greatest soldiers and builders of his age, and he was equally 
famous for his ungovernable passions, for his cruelty and 
tyranny and for his boisterous repentances. His only son, 
Geoffrey Martel, rebelled against his father's stern rule and 
the struggle lasted four years; finally the son was conquered, 
and Fulk required him to walk for miles saddled like a beast 
of burden and at the end to sue for pardon prostrate upon the 
ground. "So," he remarked complacently, as he placed his foot 
upon his son's head, "I have downed you at last !" "Yes, you 
have," said the other, "but you are the only man living who 
could have done it." 

In 1016, in the course of his struggle for Touraine, Fulk's 
forces and those of Odo, Count of Blois, met in the plain of 
Pontlevoi. There was a fearful battle, in which Fulk was 
worsted; just as he was about to retreat, however, reinforce- 
ments arrived, the cavalry of Count Odo was driven from the 
field and his foot left defenceless. Instantly falling upon these, 
Fulk massacred them to the number of three thousand, a huge 
figure for the battles of those days. This "murder of Chris- 
tians," as it was termed, created a scandal throughout France, 
and even in other countries it was spoken of as a blot upon the 
reign of King Robert the Pious. 

This, and many other acts of savagery, sent the Count of 
Anjou off some twenty years later on his last pilgrimage to 
the Holy Land. No one was ever more solicitous for the sal- 
vation of his own soul, and he had already twice made that long 
and weary journey. On one of these occasions he is described 
as having had himself dragged half naked through the 
streets of Jerusalem, calling upon Christ to "have mercy upon 
a traitor," while a servant walked on either hand scourging 

64 



CHATEAU OF LOCHES : THE RENAISSANCE BUILDINGS, 
SEEN FROM THE TOWN 





.*iMli, 



LOCHES 

him with a whip ; and he brought back, as a gift for the church 
at Loches, a piece of the true Cross which he tore off with 
his teeth! 

His faith in the power of the saints and of holy rehcs was in- 
deed almost incredible, yet his treatment of them was strangely 
irreverent. In 1025, after taking the town of Saumur from the 
Count of Blois,— it was still the struggle for Touraine,— he 
pillaged and set fire to it, the monastery of St. Florent being 
burned with the rest. Fulk implored the Saint "not to mind" 
and promised to raise a much finer building in his honor at 
Angers. The relics were accordingly placed in a boat to be 
transported down the Loire, but the rowers found that they 
could not advance an inch, try as they might. The Count of 
Anjou, all unused to opposition, became very angry; he called 
Saint Florent an ungodly boor to prefer a place like Saumur 
to a large and handsome town like Angers ; yet he was afraid 
to persist, and the rejoicing monks were allowed to keep their 
relics. 

Fulk's fame as a builder is almost as great as his fame as 
a soldier. A dozen walled towns and as many castles are 
attributed to him, as well as eleven churches and other religious 
foundations. The former were in pursuit of his undeviating 
policy of building up a great and enduring state for his house, 
the latter were given in expiation of his various crimes, some- 
times paid in advance, as it were, for crimes still uncommitted. 
For fifty-three years, from the time that the death of his father, 
Grisegonelle, put him in power, until his own death at the 
age of sixty-seven, he fought and schemed and sinned and re- 
pented, a very scourge to his neighbors and by turns the terror 
and delight of the Church. At last, about the year 1038, he 
undertook his third pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and on his 

67 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

way home he died. His body was brought back to Loches 
and buried in the Abbey Church at Beauheu, which he had 
himself founded in 1007. After being lost sight of for hundreds 
of years, the tomb was rediscovered in 1870. In it were found 
a square, low-browed skull, two jaw-bones with their full com- 
plement of teeth, and a handful of bones; and that is all we 
have from which to construct a portrait of this redoubtable 
man, one of the great figures of his age and the true founder 
of the glory of the House of Anjou. 

Geoffrey Martel, his son, was born at Loches and nursed 
there by the blacksmith's wife, from which circumstance he 
got his name of the Hammer. His father left him master of 
Anjou, Loudun, Saintonge, and a part of Berry, but Touraine, 
the darling object of all the old count's schemes, was only won 
when Geoffrey had conquered Tours and Le Mans. Geoffrey 
left no children, but his sister Ermengarde, who had married 
the Vicomte d'Orleans or de Gatinais, had two sons who suc- 
ceeded. These two quarrelled over their inheritance until the 
younger, Fulk le Rechin, or the Surly, completely defeated his 
brother, whom he imprisoned in the donjon of Chinon for 
nearly thirty years. ^ Meanwhile the Rechin lived riotously, 
misgoverned the country, and married and divorced four wives 
in succession. The fifth, Bertrade de Montfort, a beautiful 
and dissolute woman of whom he is said to have been dotingly 
fond, so fascinated the King, Philip I, that he repudiated his 
own wife in order to marry her and was excommunicated in 
consequence. This lady, having failed in an attempt to obtain 
the crown of France for her own son by making away with 
Philip's son by his first wife, after the King's death once more 
turned her attention to the affairs of Anjou. She went back 

^ See page 113 

68 



LOCHES 

to her former husband, the Rechin, who received her gladly, 
poisoned his son Geoffrey, a youth of remarkable promise, and 
had the satisfaction of obtaining- the succession for a son of 
her own, Fulk V, le Jeune, who became Count of Anjou on his 
father's death a few years later. It was the marriage of this 
Fulk's son, Geoffrey, surnamed Plantagenet, from his habit 
of wearing a sprig of broom (planta genesta) in his cap, to the 
ex-Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, that 
eventually brought the throne of England and the Duchy of 
Normandy to the House of Anjou, which in the meanwhile by 
another marriage had added Aquitaine to its already vast pos- 
sessions. These events, however, are more nearly connected 
with the history of Chinon than with that of Loches, which, 
after Geoffrey Martel's time, saw but little of its Counts. 

In 1 193 the French King, Philip Augustus, taking advantage 
of Richard Coeur-de-Lion's imprisonment in Germany by the 
Emperor, Henry VI, possessed himself of Loches ; but Richard 
escaped, and in June of the following year he is besieging his 
own castle of Loches with such fury that that well-nigh im- 
pregnable stronghold is captured in a violent assault of three 
hours. On his death five years later, Coeur-de-Lion bequeathed 
Loches as a part of the portion of his Queen, Berangaria, but 
this did not prevent his brother, John Lackland, from seizing it. 

In March, 1202, Philip Augustus summoned King John to 
resign to his nephew, Prince Arthur of Brittany, the Provinces 
of Anjou, Poitou and Normandy, reminding him at the same 
time that he was liege-man to the King of France. John re- 
fused, and when the case was heard he failed to appear, where- 
upon the French Courts declared all the lands which either he 
or his predecessors had held in fief from the King of France 
to be forfeit, "for having scorned to render to his sovereign 
7 69 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

most of the services which, as a vassal, he owed him, and for 
having constantly disobeyed his orders." 

In the following year rumors of the murder of young Arthur 
of Brittany began to circulate. The facts have never been fully 
known, but it was said that the King of England had done 
his nephew to death with his own hand at Rouen, and had then 
thrown the body into the Seine with a stone tied around the 
neck, notwithstanding which precaution it had been found later 
by a fisherman and had been buried at Bee. That was why 
King John had gone back to England. 

Nothing could have furthered Philip Augustus's schemes 
better than this crime. It gave him another pretext for keeping 
Anjou, Maine, most of Touraine and a part of Berry, which 
he already held in the name of Arthur of Brittany, and for 
taking the rest. In his triumphant campaign of 1204-5 almost 
the only places to offer a serious resistance were Chinon and 
Loches. These held out for nearly a year and the latter, under 
the command of Gerard d'Athes, fut par le Roy assiegee, lequel 
y ayant fait une grande et cruelle batterie, I'emporta, y prenant 
quelqiies si^i: vingts soldats et le susdict Gerard. When the place 
fell at last, it was found to be almost in ruins, only the collegiate 
church was unhurt. Philip Augustus repaired the fortifica- 
tions and put the castle into a state of defence, and since that 
day Loches has never ceased to belong either directly or in fief 
to the Crown or the State. 

By the beginning of the XVth century Fulk Nerra's donjon, 
so formidable in its time, was completely out of date, and had 
to be remodelled. Under Charles VI, Charles VII and Louis 
XI the Martelet tower and the Tour Ronde were built, a Guard 
house was added to the donjon, and the tours-d-bec were low- 
ered and fitted for cannon. By the time all this was completed, 

70 



TOURS-A-BEC WITH TOP OF FULK NERRA'S DONJON AT LOCHES 



1 



LOCHES 

however, the day of feudal architecture was nearly over. Under 
Charles VII the ,town was surrounded by walls of its own and 
for the future was expected to defend itself from attack; the 
gloomy buildings of the citadel became a prison and barracks, 
and the King began to build a Renaissance palace at the other 
end of the plateau. 

Of the older buildings the Tour Ronde, or Tour Louis XI, 
as it is now usually called, is the chief. This is a lofty tower 
rounded on the outer side and surmounted by a square roof, 
with a little sharply peaked cupola. There are three floors 
connected by a winding stair and a large underground apart- 
ment probably used as a store-room. On the first floor is the 
torture-chamber, spacious and not uncheerful. A heavy hori- 
zontal iron bar embedded at either end in a solid stone pillar, 
and furnished with iron rings, is shown as the device for keeping 
the prisoner fast while the torture was being administered; 
and the custodian, pointing to a great stone fire-place, tells that 
"this is where they heated the oil." A dozen or so pallet-beds 
with which the room is now furnished are for tramps — "vaga- 
bonds," who are kept here during the winter months. It was 
also, probably, in this room that the famous cage in which Louis 
XI shut up Cardinal la Balue stood.^ These cages were an 
invention of Guillaume de Haraucourt, Bishop of Verdun, who, 
according to Philippe de Commines, was the first to test their 
merits. The Bishop and his friend, Jean la Balue, who, begin- 
ning his career as an obscure country cure, had been advanced 
through the King's recommendation to be a Councillor of State 

^ M. Edmond Gautier, who made the Neither of them, he thinks, was ever 
buildings of the citadel the object of suspended, and ranks as pure invention 
years of study, says that one of the two the statement that La Balue's cage hung 
cages at Loches was kept in the room from some staples seen in the under- 
above the old gate-way and the other ground apartment. See "Histoire du 
in the main room of the Tour Ronde. Donjon de Loches," Edmond Gautier. 

73 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

and then a Cardinal, had been discovered in treasonable cor- 
respondence with the Duke of Burgundy. There was no trial, 
but there was plenty of proof. The two churchmen were seized 
and imprisoned, and La Balue was confined for eleven years 
and the Bishop for fourteen. The cage in which the former 
spent a part of his term was of the size of a small cell, it 
was made of stout wooden bars heavily clamped with iron, 
and was designed primarily to make all attempt at escape impos- 
sible. 

The idea appealed irresistibly to Louis, he would have liked 
to provide cages for all his prisoners, and, when writing 
to the Bastard of Bourbon, Admiral of France, with regard 
to the custody of the Seneschal of Guyenne, he enclosed a sketch, 
with the suggestion that it might be well to have one made like 
it. The Admiral was so affronted that he returned word that 
if that were the King's idea of how a prisoner should be kept 
he might take charge of this one himself. La Balue spent three 
years at Loches and was then removed to Montbazon. 

Another tenant of one of the cages at Loches— we have it 
on his own authority — was the historian and favorite of Louis 
XI, Philip de Commines. For some years after King Louis's 
death Commines continued in the good graces of the Regent, 
Anne de Beaujeu. In i486, however, he joined the Duke of 
Orleans in a plot to overthrow the Beaujeu government, and 
was seized and shut up in La Balue's cage at Loches. 

"Moreover, the King had caused divers cruel prisons to be 
made, as, for example, cages being eight foote square, and one 
foote more than a man's height, some of iron, and some of wood, 
plated with iron both within and without with horrible iron 
works. He that first devised them was the Bishop of Verdun, 
who incontinent was himselfe put into the first that was made, 



LOCHES 

where he remained fowerteen yeeres. Many have cursed him 
for his devise, and among others my selfe, for I lay in one of 
them under the King that now reigneth the space of eight 
moneths."^ 

In 1790, at a meeting of the "Patriotic and Literary Society" 
of Loches, one of the members moved for the destruction of 
this "rehc of despotism and slavery." The resolution was 
adopted with enthusiasm and emotion. The wood, except for 
a few pieces reserved for the bonfire of the succeeding 14th July, 
was given to the poor and the proceeds from the sale of the 
iron as well. The original and more sentimental idea had been 
that these should form a fund for the widows and children of 
the "conquerors of the Bastille." 

Under Louis XIV, and again under the first Napoleon, many 
prisoners of war were confined in the Tour'Ronde. The walls 
of the stairway and of the rooms on the upper floors are covered 
with inscriptions and rude frescoes and figures cut in the stone, 
records of these and of still earlier captives. The stair leads 
out on the roof which, surrounded by a low stone balustrade, 
forms a sort of terrace and commands a wide and lovely view. 

Directly in front on the east rises the square, grey mass of 
Fulk Nerra's donjon; south of it are, first, the inner line of 
enceinte and then the second line with its three great tours-a-hec. 
Within these last is the Martelet, and beyond them are the 
rounded heights of Bel Ebat and Vignemont. On the west 
are the shining slate roofs and white walls of the modern town, 
the sharp summits of the ancient gate de Picois, the Tour St. 
Antoine, formerly the town belfry, and the Porte des Cordeliers. 
Beyond the Porte de Picois there is a shimmering glimpse of 
the Indre, winding its leisurely way amidst harvest fields and 

1 Danett's Commines. The Tudor Translations, XVIII. 

75 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

fruitful orchards. Between the town and the citadel a thick 
line of foliage marks the line of the moat. On the extreme 
northeast are the steep slate roof and pointed tourelles of the 
chateau, and nearer, in a line with it, a row of singular pointed 
domes marks the ancient collegiate church of Notre Dame, now 
called St. Ours. Further west and onthe other side of the river, 
completely hidden at this point by trees, a tall, pointed tower 
belongs to the ancient abbey of Beaulieu, the burial-place of 
Fulk Nerra. 

It is below the Martelet that the dungeons are found which, 
associated as they have been in the popular fancy with Louis 
Xlth's sardonic cruelties, have .given Loches such an evil name. 
Guided by a custodian with a lighted lantern, the visitor 
descends thirty-eight steps of winding stair and emerges in a 
good-sized room lighted from a narrow slit in the nine-feet- 
thick wall. This slit, however, opens only on the stair and 
receives its light from a window in the outer wall. Built on 
the extreme edge of the plateau, the substructures of the Mar- 
telet are cut out of the rock itself. Thus, while from the inner 
side the dungeons seem to lie far below ground, their outer 
walls are simply a continuation of the sheer rock, and their 
windows facing west are actually far above the level of the 
moat. 

This first room is the one in which Ludovico Sforza, Duke 
of Milan, called the Moor, was confined for many years by 
Louis XIL The King himself had a strong claim upon the 
Duchy of Milan through the marriage contract of his grand- 
mother, Valentine Visconti, daughter of Duke Galeas I; and 
he made a point of always referring to Ludovico Sforza as 
"Monsieur Ludovico." In 1499 the Venetians and French 
formed an alliance against the Milanese, and in April of the 

76 



TOURS-A-BEC, FULK NERRA'S DONJON, AND TOUR RONDE OR 

TOUR LOUIS XI 



LOCHES 

following year the Moor, betrayed by his Swiss mercenaries, 
was taken prisoner at Novaro before a blow had been struck. 
Louis was wild with delight when he heard the news ; the chief 
object of the campaign had been accomplished with the capture 
of the Duke and his only fear now was lest the prisoner might 
escape. He despatched message after message to his lieutenant, 
La Tremoille, urging him to send his prize to France without 
delay, ''for," said he, ''I shall not have a moment's peace till 
the said Ludovico is safely landed on this side of the mountains." 
A cage was sent to the frontier to receive him, and in it he was 
conveyed to Loches. 

The Moor, although he is said to have cleared his way to 
power by poisoning his nephew and sending the latter's son to 
the monastery of Marmoutier, where he died, was nevertheless 
an excellent ruler and a liberal patron of the fine arts. On the 
walls of his dreary prison can still be seen a quite elaborate 
series of frescoes painted by him during the long years of his 
confinement, and there is also a primitive little sun-dial which 
he fashioned on the only spot of wall on which the sun ever 
strikes. By devices such as these he may have saved his 
reason, but his health at length broke down and he was re- 
moved to a lighter and more airy apartment, probably in the 
Tour Ronde. Before long, however, he died, having passed 
eight years in captivity, and was buried in the collegiate church 
"with all the honors due to a Prince." Subsequently his body 
was taken back to Italy. 

Nineteen steps below Sforza's prison is another, much the 
same both in size and appearance. Here the slit of window 
commands only a tiny section of sky and a glimpse of waving 
branches. The edge of the deep sill, widening out on the inside, 
is five feet or more from the floor and below it and on the sill 

79 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

itself are hollow places worn in the stone by the hands and 
feet of human creatures who, through weary years of captivity, 
have climbed and clutched and clung to snatch the last faint 
glow in the western sky before the interminable night should 
settle down upon them once more. 

All around this room at intervals appear the words Jhesus 
Maria painfully cut in the stone, and, directly opposite the 
window, is a pathetic little attempt at an altar with a cross 
carved above it and a credence-table, scooped out of the wall. 

"The cell of the Bishops" is the name by which this room is 
known, for it is here that the Bishops of Puy and Autun were 
confined by Francis I in 1523. The King, on the eve of de- 
parture to resume the war in Italy, was informed by the Grand 
Seneschal of Normandy, the husband of Diane of Poitiers, of 
a gigantic conspiracy headed by the Constable de Bourbon to 
betray France into the hands of the Emperor Charles V. The 
Constable, warned in time, managed to escape, but most of his 
accomplices were taken, among them the two Bishops and Jean 
of Poitiers, Sieur de Saint- Vallier, Diane's father. When the 
Grand Seneschal discovered that his father-in-law was among 
the prisoners he was horrified, and tried hard to obtain his 
release. Saint-Vallier on his side wrote the most appealing 
letters, imploring the Seneschal to come to Loches to consult 
as to what had best be done, or, if he could not come himself, 
to send his wife. He declares *'on the damnation of his soul" 
that he has been arrested for no reason whatever, and shut 
up like a false traitor. Then he addresses himself to his daugh- 
ter : "I implore you to have pity on your poor father, and come 
to see me. My only hope lies in your husband and in you," and 
so on. Meantime a commission had been appointed to try the 
case ; it met first at Loches, but in December the prisoners were 

80 



LOCHES 

taken to Paris, where Saint- Vallier was condemned to death 
and all his property confiscated. All the while his son-in-law 
never ceased his efforts, and, at last, when the prisoner had 
actually been led to the scaffold, the King commuted the sentence 
to imprisonment for life "in consideration of the service ren- 
dered by the Seneschal of Normandy in exposing the plot." 

A story, without any foundation in fact, that the fair Diana 
bought her father's reprieve as the price of her honor, has 
been fixed in the public mind by Victor Hugo's Le Roi 
s Amuse, in which Saint- Vallier is made to address the King 
in a speech full of dignity and scathing contempt. It concludes : 

Sire, je ne viens pas vous demander ma fille. 
Quand on n'a plus d'honneur, on n'a plus de famille; 
Qu'elle vous aime ou non d'un amour insense, 
Je n'ai rien a reprendre ou la honte a passe : 
Gardez-la ! 

A special clause in the treaty of Madrid forced by Charles V 
upon Francis I in 1526 provided that all those concerned in 
Bourbon's plot should be pardoned. So, after three years' 
imprisonment, the Sieur of Poitiers was liberated, his health 
completely shattered, however, and his hair whitened, it is said, 
in a single night, that preceding the day set for his execution. 

Beyond the prison of the Bishops and Saint- Vallier is an 
inner one connected with it by a short passage and without 
window of any kind. A square hole at one side is pointed out as 
an oubliette, but it opens into the cellar below and was certainly 
never used for the sinister purpose implied in the name. Viollet- 
le-Duc, says, indeed, that he knew of but three oubliettes in all 
France to which the name could have been applied with any 
degree of plausibility: those at Chinon, the Bastille and at 
Pierrefonds, while in his own opinion of these three that at 

8 81 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

Pierrefonds alone was a veritable oubliette. He believes, more- 
over, that the vulgar conception of the character of the prisons 
of ancient France is quite erroneous: 

"Both the number and the horror of these places of 
confinement during the Middle Ages have been greatly exag- 
gerated. There still exist at the chateau of Loches well 
authenticated prisons which are simply grated rooms, sanitary 
and quite sufficiently lighted." ^ 

This passage may refer to the prisoners in the Tour Louis XI, 
but even those in the Martelet are by no means so terrible as 
one is led to expect. They are quite as large and dry and nearly 
as light and airy as were the state apartments in Fulk Nerra's 
donjon close by where Louis XI passed his own boyhood. The 
donjon was considered a suitable residence for the Dauphin 
of France, it being particularly noted that, although Charles 
VII only saw his son occasionally, he provided liberally for his 
establishment. The main hardship for the prisoners undoubt- 
edly lay in the fact of confinement ; it was an age of great bodily 
activity, even delicate women of the highest birth made long 
journeys on horseback, and men of every class were accustomed 
to live in the saddle and, when occasion required, to sleep out 
of doors. They would feel suffocated, shut in, between those 
narrow walls, and would beat against their prison bars like 
caged animals. Almost everyone to-day visits these so-called 
underground prisons, whose windows face the west, in the 
morning; in the afternoon no lantern is needed. Ludovico 
Sforza's frescoes, though high up against the ceiling, can be 
examined without difficulty, and even the Bishops' cell below 
is surprisingly light. 

A creepy story, utterly scouted by some authors and gravely 

1 See "Dictionaire Raisonne de 1' Architecture," Viollet-le-Duc. 

82 



THE CELL OF LUDOVICO SFORZA 



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LOCHES 

> 

repeated by others, is told of a discovery made by a certain 
Pontbriand, Governor of Loches under Louis XII, "a very 
curious man who wanted to pry into every secret dungeon and 
passage-way in the castle." While investigating one day the 
Governor found a heavy iron door securely fastened ; he forced 
it, passed through a narrow passage hewn out of the solid 
rock, forced another door and found himself in a small, dim 
room, at the opposite extremity of which he made out the figure 
of a man of gigantic stature, seated on a stone and holding his 
head between his hands ; at his feet was a small wooden coffer. 
The Governor made a step forward, but as the outer air came 
in contact with the body it crumbled into dust, and the secret 
of its identity perished. 

The small room beyond Saint- Vallier's prison is pointed out 
as having been the scene of this remarkable incident. 



85 



LOCHES 

(Continued) 



THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. OURS 



CHAPTER IV 

LOCHES {Continued) 

IN the opposite direction from the group of buildings just 
described, and not far from the royal chateau, stands 
the collegiate church of St. Ours. A Xllth century 
chronicler, I'Anonyme de Marmoutier, says that the people of 
Loches were converted to Christianity by Saint Martin. He 
is probably wrong, but another Bishop of Tours, Saint Eus- 
tache, certainly built a church there some time about the 
middle of the Vth century, which he dedicated to Saint Mary 
Magdalene, 

By the latter part of the Xth century, when Loches was a 
part of the domain of the Counts of Anjou, this church had 
fallen into ruin. Geoffrey Grisegonelle, the father of Fulk 
Nerra, oppressed by the weight of his sins, set out in the year 
962 upon a pilgrimage to Rome. Pope John received him with 
much condescension, heard his confession in St. Peter's, and 
directed him, in addition to various acts of penance, to build 
a church in honor of the Virgin Mary. The Pope pronounced 
a solemn anathema upon anyone who should interfere with this 
pious work, and Grisegonelle with his suite returned to France. 
Three years later the church of Notre Dame du Chateau de 
Loches was dedicated on the site of the former chapel of Saint 
Mary Magdalene. 

91 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

Shortly after this the Count of Anjou was able to present to 
his new foundation a priceless relic, one-half of a girdle of the 
Virgin Mary. Nothing is known of the history of this relic 
before the middle of the IXth century, when it was sent from 
Constantinople to King Charles the Bald of France. From 
that day to this, however, a period of more than a thousand 
years, the record appears to be unbroken. At first the girdle 
was preserved in the Chapel royal of the Kings of France, until 
Queen Emma, wife of Lothair, presented it, about the year 978, 
to the Count of Anjou, in reward for his eminent services to 
the crown. Deposited in the collegiate church of Loches, it 
attracted swarms of pilgrims from all over the country. The 
shrine was in the form of a model in gold of the Church of the 
Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, within which the girdle reposed 
in a sort of bowl hollowed out of a piece of rare agate studded 
with precious stones. It was kept in a closet hewn out of the 
solid rock and closed with double iron doors furnished with 
five locks. 

Twice a year, on 3d May, the "Invention of the Holy Cross," 
and on the Feast of the Assumption, 15th August, the girdle 
was publicly exposed, while the royal family enjoyed the right 
to pay their devotions to it whenever they might be at Loches. 

During the Revolution the Church of Notre Dame sufifered 
terribly. Two kneeling portrait statues of Count Grisegonelle 
and his son, Fulk Nerra, which the latter had caused to be 
placed there, were broken in pieces and thrown down a neigh- 
boring well ; all the carvings were hacked and battered, and the 
rich treasures of the church, among them a golden reliquary, 
were stolen. Fortunately the cure, le Sieur Pierre Rene Leduc, 
though branded later as a "schismatic," succeeded in saving 
the girdle. He kept it by him first in his house at Loches, 

92 



GUARD HOUSE, DONJON, AND TOUR RONDE OR TOUR LOUIS XI 



LOCHES 

then at Tours and finally at Nantes, until the practice of religion 
having once more become lawful in France, it could safely 
be sent back to Loches. The cure in charge at Notre Dame 
received one day "by the swift and sure agency of the post" 
a package which proved to contain the precious object enveloped 
in the same wrappings of costly material in which it had always 
been kept. An "attestation" of its authenticity was at once 
made out and signed by a number of persons — canons, chap- 
lains and others who had been familiar with the relic before 
the Revolution. 

The girdle is made of a brownish material the exact texture 
of which has never been ascertained. It measures something 
over a yard in length by about an inch in width. On all great 
festivals of the Church the relic is exposed on the altar of the 
Virgin Mary. On the Feast of the Assumption, it is carried 
in procession after Vespers through the streets of the town 
accompanied by bands of young girls dressed in white, carrying 
baskets of flowers and chanting hymns in praise of the Blessed 
Virgin. It is also the custom for girls on the occasion of their 
first Communion and again on their marriage to wear belts 
which have been brought into contact with the girdle and 
blessed by the parish priest. Similar belts are worn by women 
about to be confined and greatly prized by them. Formerly 
the canons sent such belts to the Queen and the royal Princesses 
on the eve of their confinement. The custom was revived for 
the Empress Eugenie before the birth of the Prince Imperial. 
At present the girdle is kept by the cure at his own house and 
can usually be seen by applying to him. 

Among the special privileges enjoyed by the church of Loches 
was the very highly prized one of being under the direct juris- 
diction of Rome, in sign of which an annual tax of five sous 

95 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

was paid and spent in oil to be burned before the tomb of Saint 
Peter. Anyone attempting to encroach upon this privilege 
was liable to excommunication and the Chapter was particularly 
jealous of all interference on the part of the archiepiscopal see 
of Tours. In 1448 the Archbishop, Jean Bernard, announced 
his intention of coming to Loches to perform his devotions in 
the Church of Our Lady, and to stay in the house of one of the 
canons. Instantly the Chapter forbade his doing either, and 
threatened to excommunicate the canon should he receive him.. 
Eight years later, the Chapter having been reprimanded by an 
ecclesiastical court for exceeding their rights in this matter, 
consented grudgingly and under protest, to allow the Arch- 
bishop of Tours to enter their church once a year, but without 
the episcopal ring, crosier, or rochet, nor might he lodge within 
the precincts. In other words, the Archbishop was to come 
simply as a worshipper and without any symbol of authority. 
This not being in the least what the prelate desired, he waited 
a year, then suddenly presented himself at the church door 
with his crosier borne before him. The watchful canons were, 
however, ready. They lowered the crosier and even removed 
the carpet from the prie-dieu where the Archbishop knelt before 
he was permitted to enter. 

As we see it to-day the former church of Notre Dame de 
Loches dates almost entirely from about the middle of the Xllth 
century, when it was rebuilt by its prior, Thomas Pactius. "Just 
at the precise moment," says Viollet-le-Duc, "that separates 
buildings with domes from those without. ... A strange, 
unique edifice, in which the influences of eastern art blend and 
mingle with those methods of construction adopted in the north 
in the beginning of the Xllth century. ... If this re- 
markable building were in Italy, or Germany, or England, it 

96 



LOCHES 

would be talked about and prized and studied as a unique and 
valuable example of Roman art, and steps would be taken to 
preserve it from all fear of injury . . . being in France, 
not more than a few kilometres from the banks of the Loire, 
it has been allowed to suffer restoration at the hands of local 
architects who seen) to have had no suspicion of its value 
in the history of art." 

The striking features of the church are the rude, grotesque, 
yet animated, carvings of the west portal, and the unusual treat- 
ment of the roof, where the four bays of the nave are sur- 
mounted, those at the two ends by steeples and the middle ones 
by lofty, hollow pyramids supported on corbel-tables. 

A subterranean chapel, built possibly by Louis XI, was dis- 
covered beneath the church in 1839. The Revolutionists for 
some reason had filled it in with earth at the same time that 
they converted the church into a Temple of Reason, and totally 
destroyed the parish church of St. Ours which stood at the 
end of the present rue du Petit Fort. In 1803, when Notre 
Dame de Loches was restored to its original use, it became the 
parish church and was placed under the patronage of Saint 
Ours, the two foundations being thus merged in one. 

At the period when the collegiate church was approaching 
the zenith of its wealth and influence, a splendid royal chateau 
was rising close beside it on the northwestern extremity of the 
plateau. 

Already, by the early part of the XVth century, the wealthy 
classes were beginning to weary of their fortress-like dwellings. 
Princes and nobles and even the rich bourgeois were demanding 
light and air and ornament and comfort. In Paris Raymond du 
Temple had transformed the Louvre into a habitable dwelling 
for Charles V, and this King had, moreover, provided himself 

97 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

with a hotel, a dwelHng pure and simple, at the other end of 
Paris, the many-towered Hotel des Tournelles. 

At Loches, however, the change did not come till Charles 
Vlllth's time. It was he who began the charming chateau 
which to-day so picturesquely crowns the rock on the side over- 
looking the old town. Charles's share in it, which was not 
extensive, consists of the part called the Tour Agnes Sorel, 
in which the favorite's tomb now stands and where local tra- 
dition would have us believe her royal lover shut her up when 
he went hunting in the neighboring forest. An anecdote in- 
vented by a XVIth century writer, Bernard du Haillon, and 
repeated by Brantome, and some lines said to have been written 
by Francis I beneath a portrait of Agnes Sorel in an album 
belonging to Madame du Boissy, are responsible for the patriotic 
halo in which the memory of the Belle des Belles has been 
enveloped. The story told by Du Haillon is that the favorite 
came one day to the King, Charles VH, and told him that an 
astrologer had predicted in her childhood that she was to be 
beloved by the most powerful prince in Christendom. She 
therefore now wished to leave him and to go to the King of 
England, as it was evidently he and not Charles who was 
meant, since the latter allowed himself to be robbed of his 
kingdom without raising a hand in its defence. "Whereupon," 
says the account, "the King was so pricked in the heart that 
he began to weep, and from that moment forward he took the 
bit in his teeth and instead of passing all his time in hunting 
or in his gardens, he exerted himself to such good purpose that 
with the help of his faithful followers, he drove the English 
out of the country." 

The quatrain attributed to Francis I runs : 

Plus de louange son amour s'y merite 
Etant cause de France recouvrer 



TOWER OF AGNES SOREL 



LOCHES 

Que n'est tout ce qu'en cloistre peult ouvrer 
Close nonnayn ou au desert Ermyte. 

Agnes, however, was still a child when Henry V of England 
died, and did not visit the court until 1443, when she came in 
the train of Isabelle of Lorraine, sister-in-law of the Queen, 
Marie of Anjou. She and Charles thus met for the first time, 
seven years after the Treaty of Arras^ had "marked the first de- 
cisive step on the road to deliverance" ; and the King's character 
had undergone that "marvellous" transformation which has 
been commonly attributed to his mistress. After the disgrace of 
La Tremoille in 1433^ the change had already become apparent. 
La Tremoille was replaced by a group of resolute men — the 
Constable Richemont, Breze, Jacques Coeur and others. The 
King threw off his lethargy and, other circumstances being 
favorable, the work of France's salvation begun a few years 
before by Jeanne d'Arc was carried on to a successful issue. 

Agnes Sorel did, it is true, urge the King to undertake the 
expedition to Normandy in 1449-1450, which resulted in the 
reconquest of that country in less than a year, but in other 
respects her influence was malign. She found Charles weak 
and left him vicious, and she was the first to occupy the equiv- 
ocal position at Court of favourite en titre.^ It was thought 
at that time a scandalous thing that a woman in her position 
should live publicly at Court and maintain a state greater than 
that of the Queen herself. Marie of Anjou was indeed com- 
pletely eclipsed by the marvellous beauty and exuberant youth 
of the favorite, who, moreover, was of so sunny and amiable 
a nature that everyone liked her. Yet there was dissatisfaction 

^ The Treaty of Arras sealed the fatal ^ Par une nouveaute inouie dans les 

feud between the Crown and the power- annales monarchiques, on vit en elle 

ful House of Burgundy and ended the pour la premiere fois, une favourite en 

alliance of the latter with the English. titre." Vallet de Viriville, t. III. p. 29. 

^Seepage 141. L. OF C 

lOI 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

caused as much by her luxury and extravagance as by the 
scandal. "In all Christendom there was not a single princess 
who dressed so magnificently or lived in such splendour as she. 
A hundred thousand murmurs arose not against her only, but 
against the King as well."^ Impoverished as the country was. 
Charles loaded her with gifts; besides money and jewels, she 
had from him the chateau of Beaute sur Marne, in order, as the 
chronicler quaintly puts it, that she might be Dame de Beaute in 
name as well as in fact; the chatellenies of La Roqueceziere 
and Issoudun and the seigneuries of Bois-Trousseau, of Vernon 
and of Anneville were also gifts from her loyal lover. 

In August, 1449, Charles set forth from Chinon on the expe- 
dition to Normandy. Agnes remained till January at Loches, 
when she joined the King at Jumieges, and there on 9th Feb- 
ruary her death occurred so suddenly that it was commonly 
attributed to poison. The Dauphin, it was said, had contrived 
the murder, and Jacques Coeur had seen it carried out. 

Her death was edifying enough. Elle eut moult belle con- 
trition et repentance de ses peches, et liii souvenoit souvent de 
Marie Egyptienne qui fut grande pecheresse . . . puis 
trespassa. The body of the Belle des Belles was taken to 
Loches and interred in the Collegiate Church, to which she 
had been a generous donor. She was, indeed, always charitable 
and freely used the revenues given her by the King to help the 
poor and to found religious houses. In 1444 the Dauphin, 
afterwards Louis XI, had commanded an expedition into Switz- 
erland; on his return he found the Belle des Belles in full 
possession at Court. Only four years before he had headed 
a rebellion against his father, the Praguerie, so called from 
a recent civil war in Bohemia. Charles and the Constable 
Richemont quickly suppressed it and the rebels were forgiven; 

^ Georges Chastellain. 
102 



LOCHES 

but Louis felt that the affair was not so completely forgotten 
as he could wish. Anxious to conciliate his father, he tried to 
win over the favorite with handsome presents, but the two 
soon quarrelled, and Louis ended by hating her very heartily; 
the fact was so notorious that, as has been noted above, he was 
even accused of having caused her death. 

After the accession of Louis XI the canons of Notre Dame 
de Loches, thinking to please him, asked to be allowed to remove 
the tomb of Agnes Sorel from the church, where it occupied 
the middle of the choir. They said it was a great scandal that 
the devout should have the memory of such a woman kept 
constantly before their eyes. Louis replied that certainly if 
they felt that way about it, they should remove the tomb, but 
that they must of course at the same time relinquish all her 
gifts and legacies. The canons kept the tomb. In 1772 a 
similar request was made, the canons setting forth in a long 
and wordy document the extreme inconvenience of having the 
tomb in the choir where, they said, it greatly interfered with 
the decent and orderly observance of the services. They asked 
for permission merely to remove it to a side chapel, where it 
would be quite as conspicuous, and they reiterated that they 
had no wish to offer a slight to the memory of their benefactress. 
Louis XV, after reading the paper through, curtly wrote on 
the margin: Meant. Laissez ce tomheau oil il est! At last, how- 
ever, under Louis XVI, the canons got their way and the tomb 
was placed in the nave. During the Revolution it was broken 
in pieces, but in 1806 the parts were put together and it was 
set up in its present position in the tower of the chateau built 
by Charles VII. When the tomb was removed from the choir 
the remains were placed in an urn, which, buried later in a 
neighboring cemetery, was eventually lost sight of. 

The sarcophagus is of black marble surmounted by a full- 

103 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

length reclining statue, calm, chaste, the hands pressed together 
in an attitude of prayer. At the feet are two lambs in allusion 
to the name, Agnes, and at the head two little whispering angels 
support the cushion upon which the head rests. The inscription 
when translated reads, "Here lies the noble Damoyselle Agnes 
Seurelle, in her lifetime Lady of Beaulte of Roquesserie of 
Issouldun of Vernon-sur-Seine. Kind and pitiful to all men, 
she gave liberally of her goods to the Church and to the poor. 
She died the 9th day of February of the year of grace 1450. 
Pray for her soul. Amen." 

To the chateau begun by Charles VII, Louis XI added what 
are still known as "the new rooms." Here his Queen, Charlotte 
of Savoy, passed much of her lonely and neglected life, but sel- 
dom visited by her husband, and completely without influence. 
Louis wished this effacement to be kept up even after his own 
death. "He ordered upon his death-bed that she should remain 
like an exiled woman in the Castle of Loches. 'T is probable, the 
Lady of Beaujeu, Anne, Louis's eldest and favourite child 
whom he named regent, would have found it difficult to know 
how to have acted between the respect she owed to her mother 
and the obedience she owed to the King, her father; but the 
Queen died a few months after the King; worthy the lamenta- 
tions of the Court, if virtue was lamented there."^ 

The chateau was completed by Louis XII. In a tower at 
the west end there are two rooms known as the oratory and 
the bed chamber of Anne of Brittany. The latter is chiefly 
remarkable for the lovely view it commands, but the former, 
notwithstanding the whitewash with which at some time a 
vandal hand has covered it, is very exquisite. Carved in relief 

* Pinot Duclos, "History of Louis XI." 
104 



LOCHES : THE CHATEAU AND THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH 

OF ST. OURS 



LOCHES 

all over tlie walls at regular intervals appears the ermine, the 
device of her house. 

"As for her device, it is knov^n that the Dukes of Brittany 
had adopted the ermine on account of its whiteness, and had 
added the words Potius mori quam foedari" (better to die than 
to be tarnished)/ Above the doors and windows and on the 
lower part of a richly carved altar are the cord and tassel, — the 
cordeliere which, placed on either side of their arms by her 
grandfather and father, Francis I and II of Brittany, was 
preserved by the young Duchess. Anne built a convent at 
Lyons for the Cordeliers, and herself founded a sort of chivalric 
order for virtuous ladies, the members wearing the cord and 
tassel as a girdle, as did the Queen.^ 

The last additions to the chateau were the chancelleries built 
by Francis I and Henry 11. It was during the reign of the 
former, that the townspeople erected their clock-tower, the 
Tour St. Antoine, still standing not far from the chateau. An 
even more striking memorial of this reign is the magnificent 
horse-chestnut tree whose spreading branches shade the entire 
terrace on the west. Tradition says that it was planted by 
King Francis himself, it may be in 1539, when he received 
the Emperor Charles V at Loches. 

Three years earlier another foreign monarch had made a 
state entry into Loches, James V of Scotland, when he came 
to fetch his bride, Madeleine of France. 

In 1539 Henry II and Catherine de Medicis were also there, 
but not long afterwards the Huguenots got possession of the 

^Le Roux de Lincy, "Vie d'Anne de badge; her furniture, her hangings, her 

Bretagne." books, all are ornamented with it." Le 

^"Anne of Brittany adopted the cord Roux de Lincy. 
and tassel both as a girdle and as a 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

town and kept it for three months ; they pillaged the churches, 
but there was no bloodshed, as no one offered any resistance. 
During the period following the **St. Bartholomew," however, 
fearful scenes were enacted there. 

"An order was issued from Paris directing the people at the 
sound of the tocsin to fall upon the religionists and kill them 
like so many mad dogs. They called it 'haler la grande le- 
vriere' " (setting on the hounds) .^ After this, royalty ceased to 
frequent Loches. There is notice of a visit paid thjere to Charles 
IX in 1 571 by his brother-in-law, Henry of Navarre, but about 
this time the chateau was made over as a residence for the 
governor, and the buildings at the other end of the plateau, the 
donjon, the Martelet and round tower were used solely as bar- 
racks and prisons. 

In the summer of 1793, under a ferocious representant du 
peuple named Guimberteau, arrests were so frequent that all 
the prisons were filled to overflowing. "It was in consequence 
of this distressing state of affairs," says M. Charles dAngers 
in his Revolution en Touraine, "that the chateau of Loches has 
been preserved. It was found necessary to use it as a prison 
and even to make certain needed repairs." 

It is pleasant to find, in one case at least, the exigencies of 
the Terror preserving what otherwise would have fallen into 
ruin if indeed it had not been destroyed outright. Posterity 
could ill spare that beautiful and dignified chateau which, with 
its broad terrace overlooking the town and the Indre, and its 
charming gardens, still keeps up a sort of state as the seat of 
a sub-prefecture. 

* Mezeray, "Hist, de France." 



108 



CHINON 



CHAPTER V 



CHINON 



IN the latter half of the Vth century the Visigoths, who had 
already conquered most of Touraine, were disputing with 
the Romans for possession of the forts along the valle); of the 
Loire. One of the strongest of these was the casfrum of 
Chinon, planted upon a long and narrow and steep ridge over- 
looking the Vienne, not far below the junction of that river 
with the Loire. 

As the key to their possessions in Aquitaine (Poitou and 
Guienne) this place was of especial value to the Barbarians. 
They rebuilt the Roman fortifications, then fallen into ruins, 
and were strongly intrenched there when, in the spring of 463, 
the Roman General ^gidius, after a victory won at Orleans, 
advanced down the Loire and laid siege to Chinon. 

The town at that time probably consisted of a mere handful 
of houses grouped about a monastery lately founded by Saint 
Martin's disciple, Saint Mesme, and a line of cave-dwellings 
hewn out of the rock along the river front. At the approach 
of the Romans the inhabitants, with the neighboring country- 
people, fled to the citadel, and with them went Saint Mesme, 
then an old man, and his monks. 

Ill 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

For a time the garrison held out bravely, then ^gidius man- 
aged to cut off their water supply and would soon have forced 
them to capitulate had not Saint Mesme come to the rescue. 
He prayed unceasingly throughout an entire night and at day- 
break a storm of such unprecedented fury broke over both 
citadel and plain that, not only were the cisterns filled, but 
the enemy, seized with panic, raised the siege and fled. Not 
long after this the Romans were finally driven out of Gaul, 
and when Clovis, founder of the Merovingian dynasty, defeated 
Alaric II, in 481, the Visigoths were brought under his united 
rule. 

From the time of Clovis (481-51 1) to that of Charles the 
Simple (893-923) Chinon was a royal fortress, then it passed 
to Thibaud, Count of Blois, frankly surnamed by his contem- 
poraries le Tricheur — the Cheat. 

This Thibaud was present in 945 at a conference held on the 
island of Picquigny in the Somme, between Arnoul, Duke of 
Flanders, and William Longsword, Duke of Normandy, when 
the latter was treacherously murdered. Thibaud married the 
widow, Liutgarde, but the Normans chose Richard, an illegiti- 
mate son of William Longsword, to be their Duke. 

Seven years later Alain Barbetorte, Count of Nantes, Thi- 
baud's brother-in-law, died, confiding to him the care of his 
young son and of the latter's inheritance. The "Cheat" married 
his sister, the boy's mother, to Fulk the Good, 2nd Count of 
Anjou, and then he seized half his nephew's estates for himself. 
With the revenues therefrom, says the Chronicle of Nantes, he 
built the three chateaux of Chartres, Blois, and Chinon. 

All that is left of Thibaud's castle at Chinon is a part of the 
Tour du Moulin and of the adjoining curtain-wall in what is 
called the "Chateau de Coudray" at the western end of the 
plateau. 

112 



CHINON 

Fulk the Good's grandson and great-grandson, Fulk Nerra 
and Geoffrey Martel, wrested Touraine from Thibaud's de- 
scendants, the Counts of Blois, and it was at Chinon that Geof- 
frey Martel's younger nephew, Fulk the Surly, shut up his 
elder brother, whose inheritance he had usurped. This was in 
1068. For twenty-six years the unfortunate Count, Geoffrey 
le Barbu, lay apparently forgotten in the donjon of Chinon. 
Then Pope Urban II directed his Legate in France, Hugo, 
Archbishop of Lyons, to procure an interview with the prisoner 
and to see what could be done to restore him to liberty and 
to his estates. The offer came too late ; the captive's spirit was 
broken; he had lost even the desire to be free and the Legate 
advised that he should be left where he was. Nevertheless, the 
Pope was not satisfied, and when two years later he came to 
Touraine to hold a council at Tours and to preach the First 
Crusade, he made a point of seeing the prisoner himself and, 
with the co-operation of the young Count of Anjou, Fulk le 
Jeune, son of the usurper, he set Count Geoffrey free. 

The square keep called the Tour de Tresor, the only existing 
tower of that date in the chateau, is probably the prison of this 
Count of Anjou, who lived to be an old man without ever having 
reigned. 

For the next fifty years or so not much is heard of Chinon, 
until the Plantagenet Henry II of England, the greatest of all 
the Counts of Anjou, almost doubled the size of the fortress 
by extending it on the east and adding to the fortifications in 
other directions. 

Henry Plantagenet was a grandson of Fulk the Young. His 
father, Geoffrey the Handsome, had married the ex-Empress 
Matilda, widow of the Emperor Henry V and a daughter of 
Henry I of England. His own marriage was hardly less ambi- 
tious. In 1 152 Louis VII, King of France, committed what 

113 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

the historians call "a grave political blunder"; he repudiated 
his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and sent her back to her duchy. 
The reason given was that they were related within the for- 
bidden degrees; the actual reason doubtless was that after 
fifteen years of marriage there was still no heir. Yet France 
could better have spared a successor in the direct line than 
Aquitaine. The ex-Queen had an eventful journey home. First 
she was induced to stop at Blois by the Count, Thibaud V, who 
tried by persuasion and then by force to make her marry him 
out of hand. After escaping from Blois she was flying through 
Anjou, when word reached her that another suitor, Geoffrey, 
brother of the young Count of that province, was lying in wait 
for her at Port-au-Piles for the same purpose. Hastily chang- 
ing her route Eleanor finally gained her own duchy in safety, 
but even then she was not allowed to remain long unmolested. 
The Plantagenets were determined, and within six weeks the 
lady was captured and married to Count Henry, Geoffrey's elder 
brother, though he was fifteen years her junior ; thus her duchy 
was added to his domain. 

''Les Plantagenets avaient tons les honheurs," writes one his- 
torian. On his father's death, a year previous to his marriage, 
Henry had inherited Maine, Touraine, Saintonge and a part 
of Berry and Auvergne. His claim to Normandy through his 
mother he made good by force; Aquitaine he got with his wife; 
and Anjou by making his brother Geoffrey accept a pension 
in its stead. Then Stephen of Blois, grandson of William the 
Conqueror, died (1154), and the fortunate young Count, whose 
French possessions already outnumbered those of the French 
King himself, succeeded to the throne of England. To crown 
all, four sons and a daughter were born to him in rapid succes- 
sion, and in 1 1 58 he and King Louis were conferring together 

114 



CHINON 

at Gisors over a treaty of marriage between the son of Henry 
and Eleanor, then three years old, and the infant daughter of 
Louis and his second wife, Constance of Castille. 

Owing to the death of the Prince, this marriage never took 
place, but the treaty was renewed in favor of Henry's next son, 
Richard. The failure of the English King to keep to his bargain 
was one source of trouble later on. 

With the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, in 1 1 70, the tide of fortune seemed to turn. Henry, on 
receiving news of the murder, shut himself up for three days and 
could hardly be induced either to speak or to eat ; then he pledged 
himself to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and did public 
penance at the Archbishop's tomb. Yet suspicion of his con- 
nection with the crime always clung to him and, together with 
the undutiful conduct of his sons, ruined the latter part of 
his life. 

In 1 180 Louis Vn was succeeded on the throne of France by 
Philip Augustus, a vigorous young ruler, who took every chance 
to quarrel with his neighbor of Anjou, and to stir up trouble 
between the latter and his sons. After eight years of intermit- 
tent fighting a meeting was arranged between the two kings at 
Bon Moulins in Normandy. Henry H, old before his time, and 
anxious for peace, was struck with dismay when he reached the 
spot to see his eldest son, Richard, among the French barons. 

"Richard," said he, "what are you doing here?" 

"Beau Sire," replied the other fluently, 'T will tell you the 
exact truth. As I was riding here I chanced to meet the King 
of France and his retinue, and not wishing to avoid them I 
joined their company." 

"Very well, very well," said the old King, "but I don't believe 

a word of it !" 

II 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

The conference lasted three days. PhiHp Augustus insisted 
that his sister and Prince Richard should be married at once 
and that the latter should formally be acknowledged by his 
father as heir to the English throne and to all the French pos- 
sessions. Henry demurred and asked for time, whereupon 
Richard burst out passionately that it was just as he expected, 
his father meant to disinherit him ; and throwing himself at the 
feet of the French King, he did homage for all his father's 
provinces in France and begged for help to confirm him in his 
rights. 

Henry fell back a few steps, the circle of lords and barons 
who had witnessed the scene broke up, and the lesser knights 
with their followers pressed in, curious to learn what had 
happened. 

The King of England rode oflf alone, while Richard thence- 
forth remained with Philip Augustus. 

After this, reverses followed one another so quickly that by 
June of the succeeding year Henry's friends were urging him 
to take refuge in Normandy, where he would still be safe from 
attack, but he would not listen. On the 12th he was at Mans. 
Philip Augustus and Richard appeared together before the 
walls and tried to take the place by assault. Henry set fire 
to the suburbs and drew up his forces for the attack, but 
the wind changing, the town became enveloped in fliames, and 
the King of England, with his bastard son, GeofTrey, and seven 
hundred cavaliers, was obliged to fly for his life. Though very 
ill he rode twenty miles without drawing rein, and reached the 
chateau of Fresnaye before Philip and Richardj who had stopped 
at Mans to eat the dinner prepared for Henry, had time to 
overtake him. From Fresnaye the King went to Angers and 
from thence to Chinon, where he remained. 

116 



CHINON 

By July further resistance was impossible; Philip Augustus 
liad won one battle after another and Henry was desperately 
ill. Another interview was arranged to take place on July 4th 
at Colombiers, near Villandri, between Azay-le-Rideau and 
Tours. 

The day was excessively hot. Henry, hardly able to move, 
was lifted on his horse and arrived first at the rendezvous. All 
at once a violent paroxysm of pain seized him, gripping him 
in the feet, the legs, the whole body; he grew pale and red by 
turns. His followers carried him aside and had laid him down 
in the shade of a tree, when Philip Augustus and Richard 
arrived. 

"Where is the King of England?" they asked. And when 
told of his condition they declared that he was only feigning 
illness. Henry thereupon dragged himself forward and the 
conference began. 

One account says that when all the demands of the King of 
France had been conceded, Richard came forward to give and 
receive the "kiss of peace," but as he turned away he heard his 
father mutter : "Nevertheless, may God keep me alive till I have 
given you the punishment that you deserve !" He repeated this 
to Philip Augustus and they both laughed heartily. 

Henry, too spent to return at once to Chinon, passed the 
night at Azay-le-Rideau. In the evening, as he lay upon his 
bed, he sent for one of his people, Roger Malchael, and ordered 
him to read aloud the list of the barons who had deserted to 
the King of France. The clerk unfolded the paper and was 
about to begin when he gave a sudden exclamation. "Sire," 
said he, "may Jesus Christ have mercy on my soul; but the 
-very first name I see here is that of your son, Count John !" 

"It is enough," said the old King; and turning his face to 

117 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

the wall he lay for hours seemingly unconscious of all around 
him, and muttering words that no one could understand. The 
next morning he was taken back to Chinon and for the rest 
of that day his son Geoffrey sat with his father's head resting 
on his shoulder, fanning away the insects, while a knight sup- 
ported the King's feet. Suddenly the dying man opened his 
eyes and, fixing them upon Geoffrey, he solemnly blessed him. 
He alone of all his children, he said, had ever treated him with 
respect and affection, and should he live he intended to make 
him the most powerful Prince of them all.^ But this was not 
to be. The next day, feeling that his end was very near, he 
ordered them to carry him into the church of St. Melaine, which 
he had built in the chateau, and to lay him before the high altar, 
and there he presently expired. The servants instantly carried 
off all that was valuable in the royal apartments and even 
stripped the body. "The King of England was left naked as 
he came into the world except for his shirt and braies." Only, 
the following day, when the corpse was taken to Fontevrault 
for burial, one Guillaume de Trihan wrapped him in his own 
cloak. 

Richard heard the news of his father's death at Tours. He 
went at once to Fontevrault, and the bystanders watched him 
curiously as he stood for long, gazing silently at the motionless 
form ; but what his feelings were no one could guess. His face 
betrayed neither joie ou tristesse, deconfort, courroux on Hesse. 
After giving orders that his father's remains should receive 
every honor befitting his rank, he rode away. "And so they 
put the King of England most honorably into the ground." 

The King of France had now no pretext for keeping up the 

* After Henry's death Richard Coeur de Lion gave Geoffrey the Archbishopric 
of York, which his father had intended for him. 

ii8 



CHINON 

war, but he was extremely averse to giving up the provinces 
so lately won by his arms. All his victories had served for 
nothing but to strengthen a young and dangerous rival. He 
and Coeur de Lion went on a crusade to the Holy Land together, 
but they soon quarrelled. Philip Augustus came home and when 
Richard followed him he had to begin the conquest of his French 
lands all over again. In five years he died (1199) and all that 
he had regained his brother and successor, John Lackland, 
eventually lost. 

In 1204-5 Philip Augustus made a triumphant campaign 
through Touraine, when almost the only serious resistance 
offered was at Loches and at Chinon. The latter place held out 
valiantly for a whole year under its Governor, Hubert de 
Bourg, and the breach through which the King of France at 
last entered may still be traced in the walls. 

The next historical event of importance connected with the 
chateau of Chinon is the dramatic suppression of the Knights 
Templars in 1307-12. 

The Order of Templars was founded after the First Crusade, 
about 1 128, to police the Holy Land. Its headquarters were at 
Jerusalem near the Temple, hence its name. By the XlVth 
century, under the especial patronage of the Popes, the Order 
had become so powerful as to be considered by some a menace. 
The Knights did the banking business of Christendom, and 
princes and kings deposited their treasures with them. 

In 1291 St. Jean d'Acre, the last Christian fortress in Asia, 
fell, and with it disappeared the sole raison d'etre of the Order. 
But besides this the arrogance of the members and their enor- 
mous wealth had made them many enemies. The King of 
France, Philippe le Bel, determined to suppress them, in order, 
it is said, to seize the great treasure lying in the Temple at 

119 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

Paris. By a coup de main he had every Knight of the Order in 
France arrested at the same moment (13th October, 1307). 
The Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, and others of the highest 
officers were sent off to be interrogated by Pope Clement V at 
Avignon, but on their way the whole party were suddenly taken 
ill, a singularly significant circumstance, and could get no 
further than Chinon. They were kept there and two Cardinals, 
Fridoli de Suzy, and Broncacoir, were sent to examine them 
in prison. 

A year after they were all burned at the stake at Paris. The 
investigation dragged on till 13 12, when the Pope abolished 
the Order. 

The prison in which the unfortunate Knights were lodged 
at CHinon is probably the donjon de Coudray. It has been 
suggested that some carvings seen to-day at the left of the 
modern entrance were made by them during their imprison- 
ment. These represent three kneeling Knights, one enveloped 
in a long mantle and holding a shield and sword. Above are 
the words: Je requiers a Dieu pardon. 

During all this time and for two centuries later Chinon re- 
mained a royal fortress, but from the days of Philip Augustus 
to the time of Charles VII it was little frequented by the French 
Kings. Then it became the scene of great events. To make 
these clear it will be necessary to give a brief outline of the 
circumstances that led up to them. 

Charles VII was the fourth King of the House of Valois. 
His great-great-grandfather, Philip of Valois, succeeded to the 
throne when all three sons of his uncle, Philip V, the Handsome, 
had died without heirs male ; but his right had been questioned. 
Philip the Handsome had a daughter as well, Isabelle, married 
to Edward II of England. The law of succession had not yet 

120 



CHINON 

become fixed in France, and it was held by some that even if 
females were excluded from the throne in their own persons 
they might still transmit the right to their male offspring. If 
this were true, then Edward III, son of Edward II and Isabelle 
of France, was the rightful heir. The French barons, however, 
acknowledged Philip, son of Charles of Valois, brother of Philip 
the Handsome, as King (1328), and Edward III acquiesced 
in their decision. 

Ten years later war broke out between the two countries, 
a war which was destined to endure throughout the greater 
part of five reigns, and for a hundred years to be the scourge 
of France. 

The primary cause of this long and disastrous conflict was 
not the claim of King Edward to the French throne, though 
that soon became involved, but troubles in Guienne, which 
was held by Edward as vassal of the French crown; and in 
Flanders, upon whose flourishing manufactories England de- 
pended for her supply of cloth, while the Flemish people at 
the same time provided a market for English wool. 

In August, 1346, the English won the battle of Crecy and 
followed it up by the siege and capture of Calais. Poitiers was 
won in September, 1356, and Philip Vlth's successor. King 
John the Good, was taken prisoner and carried away captive 
to England. 

Under their next king, Charles V, the French were more 
fortunate, and Bertrand Du Guesclin had almost driven the 
English out of France. Then came the unfortunate reign of 
Charles VI, the crazy king. A quarrel between the Duke of 
Orleans and Jean Sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy, and the 
murder of the former in the streets of Paris, resulted in civil 
war. The Duke of Burgundy began negotiations with the 

121 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

English, and in October, 141 5, Henry V of England won a 
great victory at Azincourt. Seven thousand of the flower of 
the French chivalry were left dead upon the field and scions of 
almost every noble house in France, besides five Princes of the 
Blood, were either killed or taken prisoner to England. 

King Charles and the Dauphin, who, as a measure of pru- 
dence, had not been permitted to be present on the field, heard 
the dreadful news at Rouen. "They rode back to Paris accom- 
panied by only a small retinue, and made their entry into the 
capital in utter silence. The King was dressed in a robe he 
had worn continuously for two years and the hat as well. His 
hair was long and hung down about his shoulders." 

In December the Dauphin died, and his brother, the new 
Dauphin, followed him fifteen months later. The notorious 
Queen, Isabelle of Bavaria, was behaving so outrageously that 
she had to be exiled to Tours and shut up there in the Royal 
chateau.^ Tlie Duke of Orleans, son of the murdered Duke, 
taken prisoner at Azincourt, was carried off to England ; and his 
father-in-law, the Constable Bernard VH d'Armagnac, become 
the head of the Orleans party, called thenceforward "Armag- 
nac," had possession of Paris, where he organized a reign of 
terror in the name of the mad King and of his son, Charles, 
then Dauphin. 

All over France the people were taking refuge in the towns 
from the English, the Burgundians, or the Armagnacs. The 
fields were left uncultivated, the cost of bread and wine and 
eggs rose to famine prices. The most dreadful disorder reigned 
everywhere ; there was no organization, no leader, no army. 

In October, 1416, the Duke of Burgundy met Henry V at 
Calais and entered into some sort of secret pact with him, then 

^See p. 2>7- 
122 



ENTRANCE GATE TO CHATEAU OF CHINON BUILT BY 
HENRY PLANTAGENET 



CHINON 

he went to Tours, liberated the Queen, and with her marched 
on Paris, where his followers drove out the Armagnacs with 
terrible massacres. The Provost of Paris, Tangui du Chatel, 
had barely time to snatch up the Dauphin in his arms and smug- 
gle him out of the city, concealed in the folds of his long cloak. 

Henry V meanwhile proceeded with the conquest of lower 
Normandy. He established a firm government, and many per- 
sons, weary of anarchy, submitted to him voluntarily; some of 
the neighboring lords entered into treaties with him. 

Paris was now governed by Jean Sans Peur, who, while not 
openly supporting the English, did nothing to check them, and 
turned a deaf ear to the frantic appeals for aid sent by the 
citizens of Rouen, closely besieged by Henry. 

The Constable Armagnac having been killed, the Dauphin, 
now sixteen years old, took the leadership of the party. In 
141 7 he was appointed Lieutenant-General of the kingdom by 
his father, and in the following year he took the title of Regent. 
Then the Duke of Burgundy, after failing in some negotiations 
with the English, concluded an alliance with the Dauphin. The 
two swore upon the Holy Evangels, the True Cross and their 
hopes of Paradise, together to drive the English from the coun- 
try. When news of this reached Paris the bells were rung, there 
were processions in the streets, and Te Deums were sung. 
Yet in spite of all this Jean Sans Peur continued to send secret 
embassies to King Henry, and made no effort to stop the latter's 
advance on Paris. Another interview was arranged. Bur- 
gundy and the Dauphin met in the late afternoon of the 7th 
of September (1419) on the bridge of Montereau. Hot words 
were exchanged, the Dauphin charged the Duke with having 
failed to keep his promises, the Duke violently defended him- 
self, and the meeting broke off in anger. Charles withdrew 

125 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

and immediately after there were sounds of a struggle. The 
Duke of Burgundy fell to the ground stabbed in half a dozen 
places. 

The Burgundian party declared that the murder was pre- 
meditated and at once stopped negotiations with the Dauphin, 
while the son of the murdered Duke, Philippe le Bon, passed 
over with his entire following to the English, carrying with 
him, moreover, the poor helpless King. 

"Sire," said a monk of Dijon to Francis I in 1521, as he 
showed him the skull of Jean Sans Peur with a sword-cut in it ; 
"Sire, there is the hole through which the English entered 
France."^ 

The Anglo-Burgundian alliance soon bore fruit. In May, 
1420, a treaty of marriage was concluded at Troyes between 
Catherine of France and Henry V ; in it Henry was called the 
"only true son of the King and Queen of France," while Charles 
was referred to as the "self-styled Dauphin," and his claim to 
the succession repudiated. Charles VI was to keep the throne 
during his lifetime, but Henry was to bear the title of "heir to 
the King of France," and in conjunction with the Duke of 
Burgundy to administer the government. Normandy, together 
with all the other places already won by him, was to remain 
his in appanage. Two weeks later the marriage took place and 
immediately afterwards the war against the Dauphin was re- 
sumed. 

In August, 1422, Henry V died at the age of thirty-five, 
leaving a son not yet ten months old. In October of the same 
year Charles VI followed him. He was only fifty-three, but 
he seemed an old man. The King of France was buried at 
St. Denis ; the only Prince present at the funeral was the Duke 
of Bedford, brother of Henry V and Regent for his infant 

* See "Histoire de France," Ernest Lavisse; t. 4, p. i. A. Coville. 

126 



CHINON 

nephew. After the sergeants-at-arms had broken their staves 
of office and had thrown them into the open grave, the king- 
at-arms cried aloud : "God give long life to Henry, by the 
grace of God, King of France and of England, our Sovereign 
Lord!" 

The great weakness of the party of Charles VII, it has been 
said, was Charles himself. At first, as Dauphin, he had shown 
considerable energy. The alliance between the Burgundians 
and the English drove many waverers to his side. He held the 
south of France solidly and had pushed north as far as Chartres. 
Cut off from Paris, he had nevertheless established a seat of 
government at Bourges, hence the title given to him by derisive 
Burgundians — "the King of Bourges." 

Then he suddenly seemed to lose all interest in the struggle. 
At the time of his accession he no longer accompanied his troops. 
While the English were conquering his kingdom he dreamed 
away the time among his chateaux in Berry, in Poitou, and in 
Touraine; caring for nothing but his approaching marriage 
with Marie of Anjou, and the pleasures and fetes of his little 
court. 

In appearance he did not cut a very gallant figure. "All his 
life the Dauphin had been weak and puny. His legs were thin, 
he was knock-kneed and awkward. His portraits, whether 
painted in youth or in old age, all give him the same aspect — 
that of a worn-out old man. The head is large and ugly, the 
nose long, the mouth thick and sensual, the chin heavy, the 
eyes small and furtive. It is the face of the son of a madman 
and of a dissolute woman, weighed down from infancy by a 
tragic destiny and by the burden of a fate too heavy for his 
frail shoulders to support."^ 

In his retirement Charles was surrounded first by one set 

* "Histoire de France," Ernest Lavisse ; t. 4, p. 2. Ch. Petit-DutailHs. 

127 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

of favorites and then another, all equally corrupt. They coined 
false money, pledged the crown jewels, stole the subsidies raised 
to carry on the war, and instead of making common cause 
against the English carried on civil wars among themselves. 
Conspiracy followed conspiracy. The favorite of the hour 
would be seized before the very eyes of the King; sometimes 
to be murdered, sometimes to be held for a heavy ransom, which 
Charles would inevitably pay. The Queen, Marie of Anjou, 
was both good and amiable, but without any more strength 
of character than her husband. Her strong-minded mother, 
Yolande of Arragon, and the Constable Richemont, brother 
of the Duke of Brittany, neither of them wholly admirable 
characters, were the only two people about the court who still 
worked for the recovery of the kingdom. 

Richemont was obliged himself to be much away from court, 
but he wished to establish some one there upon whom he could 
rely to look after his interests. His unfortunate choice fell 
upon Georges de la Tremo'ille, "a big, fat man about forty 
years old, sensual, vain, ready to commit any infamy in order 
to satisfy his appetites." He had killed his first wife by ill 
usage, and had contrived the death of the last favorite, the 
Chamberlain Pierre de Giac, in order to marry his wealthy 
widow. 

The English held all the north— Normandy, the He de France, 
most of Picardy and Champagne; Burgundy was their ally, 
and Brittany and Lorraine were neutral. South of Paris the 
country between the Seine and the Loire was already partly 
won and the invasion was creeping steadily down. 

Everywhere throughout the territory of the English the most 
dreadful misery prevailed. There was no security for person 

128 



CHINON 

or property. The towns were full of houses in ruins, the fields 
were devastated ; merchants, mechanics and farmers alike com- 
plained that they could no longer make a living. 

In the Armagnac country things were little better, for a state 
of utter anarchy prevailed and "the good old rule" was every- 
where supreme. 

In 1424, however, Charles, aroused by signs of discord among 
his enemies, nerved himself for a great effort. For a long time 
there had been no pitched battles; he now collected an army, 
composed in great part of Italian, Spanish and Scottish troops, 
and on the 17th of August, 1424, gave battle to the English at 
Verneuil. 

The result was a disaster nearly as appalling as that of Azin- 
court. The Scottish contingent was annihilated, and Charles, 
utterly discouraged and hopeless, fell back into his usual state 
of apathy. 

A year after the battle of Verneuil the Duke of Bedford, the 
Regent, went to England. During his absence the war lan- 
guished, but in the summer of 1428 the Council of the (English) 
Regency at Paris determined to occupy Orleans, one of the 
strongest places in France, and necessary to them as a base of 
future operations. The Duke of Salisbury brought over an 
army from England, which landed at Calais, and arrived before 
Orleans on 7th October, 1428. 

The court meantime was at Chinon, where the States-General 
were also assembled, but the supreme authority was La Tre- 
moille. He had got his patron, Richemont, the best Cap- 
tain the French possessed, disgraced, and was carrying 
on a war with him in Poitou. At the very moment when 
the English arrived before Orleans the partisans of the 

129 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

Constable and of La Tremo'ille were carrying fire and sword 
through this rich province, and Richemont was besieging Ste. 
Neomaye, held by one of La Tremoille's captains. 

Appeal after appeal was sent out from Orleans. The States- 
General implored the King to recall Richemont and voted five 
hundred thousand francs for the relief of Orleans, but nothing 
was done. The court was taken up with discussing plans for 
Charles to take refuge in Arragon or Scotland, and La Tre- 
mo'ille got possession of the money raised for the war and used 
it for his own purposes. 

Such, roughly, was the situation when Jeanne d'Arc, "the 
peasant-maid of Domremy," came to Chinon to deliver France. 

Jeanne's own account of her call is very explicit.^ She was 
born, she says, in the village of Domremy, on the Meuse, the 
eastern frontier of France. From her mother she learned her 
Pater, her Ave Maria, and her Credo. She was about thirteen 
when she began to hear Voices. The first time it was mid-day, 
in her father's garden, and she was much frightened. She 
heard them frequently after that; they ordered her at last to 
"go into France and to raise the siege of the city of Orleans." 
They also told her to conduct the King to Rheims for conse- 
cration. In the beginning of the year 1429, directed by the 
Voices, she went to Vaucouleurs, which was the nearest military 
station, and asked the commanding officer, Robert de Baudri- 
court, to give her letters to the King. After several repulses 
she got her way. Baudricourt gave her the letters and a sword, 
and the people of Vaucouleurs provided her with a horse, a 
black doublet, a short grey coat, and a black woollen cap. She 
wore her black hair short, and cut round in the bowl-shaped 

^See Quicherat. ^' Proces de condemnation et de rehabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc,^' 

etc., 1841-1849. 

130 



CHINON 

fashion of the day. Thus equipped she set out on her ride to 
Chinon, accompanied by a knight, a squire, and two servants. 

In his evidence given at the process of rehabihtation, the 
knight (Jean de Novelemport, called Jean de Metz) says that 
the journey took eleven days, "always riding towards the said 
town of Chinon." They travelled usually at night for fear 
of the Burgundians and the English, who were 'masters of the 
roads. Jeanne, fully dressed, always slept between him and 
the squire, Bertrand de Poulangey. She liked to hear Mass 
whenever it was possible, but owing to the danger they were 
only able to do this twice. Jean de Metz says : 'T had absolute 
faith in her, her language and her ardent belief in God influ- 
enced me. She inspired me with such respect that for nothing 
in the world would I have dared to molest her. While we 
were with her we found her always good, simple, pious." 

Arrived at Chinon, Jeanne found lodgings with a "worthy 
woman," not far from the chateau. Rumors of her mission had 
gone abroad, and there was considerable curiosity to see her, 
a feeling that was increased by an incident that occurred when 
she had been there some days. 

A drunken soldier riding by hailed her: "So, you are the 
Maid!" he cried, adding some horrid blasphemy. Jeanne re- 
garded him calmly. "So near thy end, dost thou yet blaspheme 
thy God!" she observed, and passed on; but within the hour 
the man, attempting to ford the Vienne, fell from his horse 
and was drowned. 

The court, all this time in a great state of indecision, was 
not reassured by the incident. It was an age when everyone 
was afraid of sorcerers. The panegyrist of the Constable 
Richemont says of that hard-headed soldier: "He was very 
good and religious and burned more sorcerers than any other 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

man of his time." Jeanne was therefore closely watched and 
examined more than once before it was thought safe for the 
King to receive her. 

At last, however, oh the evening of 25th February, the Count 
of Vendome came to conduct her to the chateau. They climbed 
the steep and narrow road, passed through the great gate of 
Henry Plantagenet, and arrived at the "Chateau du Milieu," 
built largely by Charles VII himself. Here, in the Grand'Salle, 
the King was awaiting the peasant-maid, who said she was come 
to restore him to his kingdom. 

The huge room was lighted by fifty torches ; over three hun- 
dred cavaliers, men-at-arms and members of the clergy were 
assembled. Grouped about the King were the Archbishop of 
Rheims, the Duke of Alengon, La Tremoille, Charles de Bour- 
bon and others. Coming suddenly from the darkness without 
into all this glare and stir, Jeanne might well have felt fright- 
ened. If so, she gave no sign. 

Advancing to about a "lance-length" from the King, she 
doffed her woollen cap— she had pretty manners — and kneeled 
down. 

"God give you long life, Gentle Prince," said she. 

"I am not the King, Jeanne," said Charles. "There he is, 
over there," pointing to a far more richly clad cavalier who 
stood by.^ 

"In God's name, Gentle Prince, you are he and none other," 
she replied with perfect confidence. 

Some conversation followed, but Charles appeared not to 

^ There is no reason for thinking that when his old doublets had to be made 

Charles purposely disguised himself in to serve by putting in new sleeves, and 

mean attire in order to test the Maid. when he could not buy himself shoes. 

He was a spendthrift and squandered Only the year before the citizens of 

money as soon as he got it, living be- Tours had presented the Queen with 

tween whiles almost in penury. His some pieces of linen, knowing her to be 

credit was so bad that there were times in need of chemises. 



CHATEAU AND TOWN OF CHINON WITH BRIDGE 
ACROSS THE VIENNE 



CHINON 

be much impressed. Then she asked him to speak with her 
aside, she had a "sign" which she would give him in private. 
They went apart, and the bystanders saw that the King was 
interested and excited by something that she told him. When 
the interview was over his manner had changed, he was cheerful 
and confident and ordered that Jeanne should be lodged within 
the castle.^ She was taken to the Donjon de Coudray and 
placed in charge of a "noble matron" in the Governor's quarters. 
On the way Jeanne stopped at a little chapel dedicated to Saint 
Martin; she remained a long time kneeling before the altar, 
and when she came out they saw that she had been weeping. 
When asked why, she said that her Angels (Saint Michael, 
Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret) had appeared to her and 
that it had grieved her to see them depart. "I wept. Willingly 
would I have gone with them, that is to say — my soul." 

After weeks of discussion and delay it was at last decided to 
adopt Jeanne's carefully thought-out plans for the relief of 
Orleans, but she had first to submit to a further searching 
examination at Poitiers. At length everyone appeared to be 
satisfied; troops were mobilized at Blois, and on 28th April, 
1429, the army marched out singing the Veni Creator. Jeanne 
rode at the head, accompanied by her white banner, borne be- 
fore, on which were painted a representation of God the Father, 
the fleur-de-lys, and the words "Jhesus Maria." Chinon saw 
her no more. 

In but little over a year the Maid had done everything she 

^ Much was made of this "sign" at her towards him, had made him think that 

trial. Jeanne at first refused to answer he might after all not be a son of 

any questions about it, but later she Charles VI, but he had never spoken of 

told them in the form of an allegory. this to any one. When therefore Jeanne 

It appears that Charles had long been announced that she had been directed 

troubled with doubts about his birth. to assure him that he was indeed the 

The notorious life led by his mother, legitimate heir to the throne, it appeared 

Isabelle of Bavaria, and her behavior to him to be nothing short of miraculous. 

135 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

set out to do. She had deHvered Orleans, she had led Charles 
to Rheims to be consecrated, she had set on foot the redemption 
of France. In May, 1430, while attempting to relieve Com- 
piegne, besieged by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, she 
was thrown from her horse and made prisoner by a Picardian 
archer in the service of the Bastard of Wandonne, a follower 
of Jean de Luxembourg. 

The news quickly spread over all France, but not a hand was 
raised to save her. The King, if he would not fight for her, 
might either have bought or exchanged her. He did neither, 
and after six months she was sold to the only bidder — the 
English ; no one else apparently wanted her. 

Jean de Luxembourg received ten thousand livres turnois^ 
for his prize, and the Bastard of Wandonne a pension. What 
the archer who actually made the capture got is not stated. 

In February, 143 1, the Maid was taken to Rouen, then in the 
hands of the English, and tried on a charge of heresy before 
an ecclesiastical court presided over by Pierre Cauchon, Bishop 
of Beauvais, in whose diocese she had been taken. She was 
confronted by more than a hundred assessors, two or three of 
them English, the rest Frenchmen belonging to the Burgundian 
party. 

The trial lasted till the end of May; Jeanne had no counsel, 
but defended herself shrewdly and ably throughout. At the 
very last, when she saw what was going to happen if she per- 
sisted, she became frightened, and there was a brief lapse ; but 
after that there was not so much as a tremor. She was de- 
clared guilty of heresy, condemned, and handed over to the 
secular arm of the law (the English) to be burned at the stake 
on 30th May, 143 1. 

1 At that time the intrinsic value of a livre turnois was only 
about three francs. 

136 



CHINON 

Twenty-four years later, at the solicitation of her family, 
Pope Calixtus ordered an investigation; the trial of Jeanne 
d'Arc was then pronounced wicked and illegal, the findings 
were annulled and the Maid was rehabilitated. 

"Through the valor and ability of this young girl Charles 
VII recovered (in thirteen months) Orleans, Vendome, Dunois, 
most of Champagne, la Brie, Chalonne, Rennes, Valois, and the 
counties of Clermont and Beauvais. On the east her successes 
had induced Rene of Anjou to revolt against the suzerainty of 
Henry VI, thus interposing between the English and Burgun- 
dian countries a vast region friendly to the King." 

Such were the results of a campaign of thirteen months suc- 
ceeding many years of almost uninterrupted defeats. The 
Maid's reward was a martyr's crown and undying fame. 

Soon after arriving at Chinon you begin to meet with re- 
minders of the Maid. There are the Place Jeanne d'Arc, 
and the Quale Jeanne d'Arc, and even the double-decked scow 
Jeanne d'Arc, where the housewives of Chinon wash their soiled 
clothes ; and, in the centre of the Place, a statue of Jeanne d'Arc 
representing her in a violent state of agitation madly plunging 
over dead bodies; but none of these honors make up for the 
loss of the well on whose brim she stepped when alighting after 
her long ride from Vaucouleurs. It was destroyed in compara- 
tively recent times. 

Passing along the shady quay and by a statue of Rabelais, 
who, it is thought, was born at Chinon, a spot is presently 
reached from which a comprehensive view of the castle may 
be had. 

The ground begins to rise not far from the river-bank, and 
the town is drawn out in a long, narrow fringe along the lower 
part of the incline, and threaded by steep and tortuous little 

137 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

streets. When it becomes too sheer for houses, tiny gardens 
and vineyards are scooped out of the rocky soil. Above these 
there is a space of rock and wall and scanty verdure through 
which a stone-paved road slants sidewise to where an arched 
bridge spans the moat and brings you to Henry II's feudal 
gateway. 

From where you stand you can distinctly mark the limits of 
the three groups of buildings which compose the chateau. On 
the extreme right, above the line of the road, rises the square 
bulk of the Fort St. Georges built by King Henry and called 
after the patron saint of his kingdom over the water. It is 
now completely in ruins. In the middle, indicated by the tall 
tower of the gateway on the one hand and a close mass of walls 
and towers and gables on the other, is the chateau du Milieu, 
built by Henry II and Charles VII, and beyond that, at the 
western end of the plateau, is the chateau de Coudray, the oldest 
part of all, terminating in the round Tour du Moulin and a 
square, heavily buttressed supporting wall. 

After passing through the town and climbing the hillside — 
gaining at every step wider and more radiant views of the 
valley — you reach the bridge and the gate. The latter, im- 
posing, and nearly intact, still preserves its fortress-like char- 
acter, but the interior of the chateau is a surprise. It is a great, 
overgrown, neglected garden, where crumbling walls and 
ruined towers start up from amidst a tangle of shrubbery and 
trees — vast, sun-bathed, deserted. 

A path leads straight ahead of you, following the line of the 
heavy curtain-wall, and presently there comes into view the 
gable end of what was once a two-storied building rising from 
a carpet of greensward dotted over with white clover. Walls 
and floors are gone, this only is left, but, clinging to it yet, are 
two wide stone fire-places, the one above the other. 

138 




RUIN OF THE GRAND'SALLE, WHERE JEANNE D'ARC / 

FIRST MET CHARLES VII 



CHINON 

Scanty and forlorn as the ruin is, it yet has power to thrill 
you, for there, where the upper fire-place marks the line of the 
second floor, was the Grand' Salle where Jeanne d'Arc and the 
King first met. 

Following the way she probably took when the momentous in- 
terview was over, you pass through the armory, the kitchen, the 
servants' hall, the bake-house and the store-room of the chateau 
du Milieu, and cross the stone bridge that now spans the deep 
moat of the chateau de Coudray. Immediately on the right 
rises the donjon where she was lodged, and close by a few 
stones, overgrown with grass and ivy, are all that are left of 
that "little chapel" where she lingered to pray, and wept to 
see the Angels leave her. 

The entrance to the donjon is modern, but on the left are 
to be seen the carvings attributed to the Knights Templar who 
were confined there later. The stair is the same as that up and 
down which the sturdy little figure of the Maid came and went 
throughout all those anxious weeks of uncertainty, but there is 
no tradition as to which room she occupied. 

Three years later an event took place here that further con- 
tributed to the King's regeneration. 

Some of the more resolute of Charles's advisers determined 
that at all costs Georges de la Tremoille must be got rid of. 
They laid their plans, gained over the Governor of the chateau, 
and one night towards the end of June ( 1433) were admitted by 
a small postern door to the chateau de Coudray, where the fa- 
vorite was lodged. Their idea was merely to take him prisoner, 
but he, awakening suddenly to find his room full of armed men, 
seized his sword, and there was a scuffle, in the course of which 
one of the party drove his dagger into La Tremoille's stomach 
down to the hilt. He was so enormously fat, however, that 
the wound did little harm. They carried him off to the castle 

141 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

of Montresor and kept him there till a ransom had been paid 
(but not this time by Charles) and he had given security that 
he would never again attempt to see the King. 

Charles seemed rather relieved than otherwise to be rid of 
him and submitted quietly to be taken in charge of by his 
mother-in-law and the Constable Richemont. "La Tremoille's 
reign was at an end; it would have been difficult indeed for 
France not to be the gainer by the change." 

Naturally at a place where Charles VII made such frequent 
and such lengthy sojourns some association with Agnes Sorel 
is to be expected. She and the King first met in 1443.^ He 
built her a house in the Park Roberdeau, lying on the north- 
west of the chateau, and the guide speaks vaguely of "a secret 
passage-way that once led from the Tour d'Argentin in that 
direction." There is no trace, however, of any such passage, 
and Charles's relations, moreover, with the "belle des belles" 
were too frankly admitted to make one necessary. At the 
beginning she lived at court, and it is told that one day in 
the year 1444, when the Queen and all her ladies were assem- 
bled in one of the rooms at Chinon, the Dauphin (afterwards 
Louis XI) rode up to the castle, booted and spurred, dismounted 
and entered. Walking straight up to Agnes Sorel, he began 
to abuse her violently and finally struck her, then turning on 
his heel, he marched out and away, and was next heard of as 
having betaken himself to the camp of the Duke of Burgundy. 

After his father's death (1461) Louis gave Chinon as a resi- 
dence for his mother, Marie of Anjou. He was seldom there 
himself, but in 1473 the whole Court assembled at Chinon to 
witness the marriage of the historian, Philippe de Commines, to 
the "noble demoiselle Helene de Chambes." Commines was later 

^See p. loi. 
142 



CHINON 

made Governor of the chateau, when he repaired the castle 
walls and rebuilt the church of St. Etienne below in the town. 
The interior of this church has been restored out of all interest, 
but the west portal is still untouched and beautiful. Above 
are seen Commines's arms — gueulles au chevron d'or et trois 
coquilles. 

Further west and directly below the chateau du Milieu rises 
the white-pointed spire of the church of St. Maurice, founded 
about 1 1 60 by Henry II of England. Part of his work still re- 
mains a good example of a type of architecture so characteristic 
of his time as to be named by some French writers le style 
Plantagenet. 

Though not much at Chinon himself, Louis XI used it occa- 
sionally as a lodging for his "guests." He there shut the young 
Duke of Alengon into a cage for three months in the dead 
of winter for having presumed to lay plans to go to Brittany 
in order to escape from the persecutions of the King. His 
food was passed in to him through the bars on the end of a 
prong as though he had been some dangerous wild beast, and 
he was only freed at last on the condition of having a royal 
garrison quartered in every strong place in his domain. 

Rabelais, whose name is associated with Chinon, whose statue 
ornaments the quay, and whose birthplace is even pointed out, 
may, it is true, have been born there (about 1495), but if so, 
his connection with the place soon ceased. He was educated 
for the priesthood at Fontenay-le-Comte, was a member first of 
the Cordeliers and later of the Benedictines, studied at the 
University of Montpelier, practised medicine at Lyons, trav- 
elled about in France and Italy in the trains of various patrons, 
and died at Paris about 1553. 

In 1532 the first rough sketch of his most famous work 

143 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

appeared under the title of Les Grandes et inestimables Chro- 
niques du grant et enorme Geant Gargantua. This he ex- 
panded later into Pantagriiel: Les horribles et espouvantables 
faits et processes du tres renoinme, Pantagruel, roy des Dip- 
sodes ... His du grand geant Gargantua. 

One can fancy Rabelais, a tiny lad, running with the other 
little boys of the town, to watch Caesar Borgia's arrival in 
state at Chinon in 1498. Pope Alexander VI had approved 
Louis XII's action in divorcing his wife, Jeanne of France,^ 
and was now sending his son to claim the reward. Caesar 
Borgia's entry into Chinon (21st December) "surpassed in 
magnificence the triumphs of the Emperors at Rome." He 
brought with him the Pope's pledge to facilitate Louis's mar- 
riage with Anne of Brittany, and in addition a Cardinal's hat 
for Georges d'Amboise.^ In return Caesar got the province 
of Valentinois, erected in his favor into a duchy, the command 
of a company, a fixed income, and above all a promise of help 
in arranging a marriage for him. This last part was not ac- 
complished without difficulty. It required the intervention of 
Georges d'Amboise and even of Anne of Brittany before Alain 
d'Albret, not an especially scrupulous person, could be induced 
to give his daughter Charlotte in marriage to this ''good and 
worthy personage, sober and discreet." 

After the close of the XVth century hardly anything more 
of interest is heard of as taking place at Chinon. In 1626 a royal 
decree ordered the destruction of all the castles and fortresses in 
the interior of France. The decree was never carried into effect, 
and at Chinon the townspeople protested against it on account 
of the danger to the houses below. Some years later the chateau 

iSeep. 185. 2 See p. 314. 

144 



CHINON 

was given to Cardinal Richelieu, but he did not care for it 
and allowed it to fall into ruin ; it was never again restored. 

Seized by the State during the Revolution, Chinon is now 
the property of the government and is used as a sort of public 
park; it is this fact that makes it one of the most satisfactory 
of all the chateaux to visit, as the caretaker, after reciting her 
lesson with dull fidelity, leaves you to yourself to wander at 
will among the gardens and the ruins. 

You may stand with Thibaud the Cheat on his Tour du 
Moulin and gaze towards Anjou, out of which the enemies 
of his house were to arise; you may mark the steep road up 
which the dying Henry II was carried, or, in a grassy solitude, 
trace the spot where he presently expired; you may climb the 
stair trodden by the Pucelle, or kneel with her on the stones 
of the "little chapel" and listen for her Voices; or you may 
rest upon the stone window-seats of the chateau du Milieu, 
and with the gentle, patient Marie of Anjou watch the green 
river as it sweeps through the valley below. Left to yourself 
and amid such surroundings it would be a feeble imagina- 
tion indeed that should fail to reconstruct some at least of 
the strange and romantic episodes which have had Chinon for 
their scene. 



14 



145 



LANGEAIS 



CHAPTER VI 

LANGEAIS 

IN strong contrast with the ruined state of Chinon is that 
of the XVth century castle of Langeais, which stands at 
the junction of the Loire with the Httle river Roumer, and 
which is said to be one of the best examples of military archi- 
tecture in France. 

In 992 Fulk Nerra, Count of Anjou, who had been meddling 
in the affairs of Brittany, won a battle at Nantes which gave 
him the control of that duchy. Conan, Count of Nantes, was 
killed, and the Count of Anjou took possession of Nantes in 
the name of the little Breton Count, Judicael, and appointed 
one of his own people to administer the government. This 
done, he turned his attention to Touraine, which then belonged 
to his brother-in-law, Odo, Count of Blois. Watching his 
opportunity, he seized the rocky promontory at the mouth of 
the Roumer, and built upon it a strong square keep to be at 
once an outpost for his capital of Angers and a menace to the 
rival town of Tours. Here Odo besieged Fulk and drove him 
out, to be himself besieged in turn, and their successors did 
the same until at last when Geoffrey Martel had completed 
the conquest of Touraine^ that province and Anjou were united 
under one ruler. 

1 See p. 61. 

H9 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

In the beginning of the Xlllth century, when the quarrel 
broke out between the King of England and his nephew, young 
Arthur of Brittany, Philip Augustus, King of France, took 
part with the latter against his uncle, just as he had aided 
John against Richard Coeur-de-Lion, and both of them against 
their father, Henry 11.^ In return Arthur swore fealty to 
the King of France for Maine, Anjou, and Touraine, and re- 
warded the French barons who fought for him with castles 
and lands. In this way Langeais passed to one Robert de Vitre, 
who, in 1206, ceded it to the King, Philip Augustus. 

During the latter part of the reign of Saint Louis (1226- 
1270) a certain Pierre de la Broce, described as chirurgien et 
valet-de-chamhre dii rot, laid the foundation of a career of 
extraordinary prosperity by curing his royal master of an obsti- 
nate affection of the leg. In reward for this service he was 
given some lands and the office of Chamberlain. Louis's suc- 
cessor, Philip III, the Bold, conceived an especial liking for La 
Broce, and so loaded him with benefits that when a notary later 
on was making out an inventory of the favorite's possessions he 
wrote a marginal note to the effect that had the King after 
his return from Tunis attended to nothing but the presents 
which he made to La Broce he would still have been kept busy. 
Among other gifts the favorite received the z'iUe et chatellenie 
et prevote de Langes en Touraine, with all fiefs and domains 
thereunto appertaining, and there he lived in great style, courted 
by all the neighboring barons, and by crowned heads as well, 
and even by the Pope, when the Holy See wanted some 
favor from the French Court, where La Broce was known to 
be supreme. 

The Chamberlain altered Fulk Nerra's donjon into some- 

1 See p. 69. 

150 



LANGEAIS 

thing more habitable for himself and his large family, and it 
is thought that he had already begun to build the present 
chateau when, more sudden even, and swift, than his rise to 
power, came the end. 

His master Philip had married for his second wife Marie de 
Brabant, a young and headstrong Princess, who did not fancy 
the Chamberlain's influence over her husband. Instead of 
trying to ingratiate himself with the Queen, La Broce made 
the fatal mistake of insinuating things against her. The 
Dauphin, Philip's son by his first wife, Isabelle of Arragon, 
had recently died; La Broce hinted that the Queen knew more 
about the cause of his death than she would care to admit, 
and that, unless a strict watch were kept, the other two Princes 
might shortly follow their brother. 

When the Queen heard of these slanders, she lost no time 
in retaliating. Word was brought from the French Ambas- 
sador at the Court of Castile that someone was betraying the 
secrets of France. Suspicion fastened upon the Chamberlain; 
he was seized, shut up in the tower of Joinville, and, without 
being given an opportunity to defend himself, was hanged at 
Montfaucon in June, 1278. 

People were dumbfounded at this sudden punishment for 
they knew not what; it was said that the King had even pro- 
tested against the execution, but without avail, and the gossip 
found its way into current verse:* 

"L'an mil deux cent septante et huit 
S'accorderent li barons tuit [tout] 
A Pierre de la Brosse pendre. 
Pendu fut sans reangon prendre 
Contre la volonte le roy 

^ "Les Fabliaux de Brabazant." 
151 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

Fu-il pendu, si com je croy 

Mien escient qu'il fut desfest [mon avis est] 

Plus par en vie que par fet." 

All of La Broce's property was confiscated, and Langeais 
once more reverted to the crown. 

Even if it is true that the unfortunate Chamberlain began 
the present chateau, the main part of the work was done in 
the XVth century by order of Louis XI, when Jean Bourre, 
one of his ministers of finance, was Governor. 

Money had to be found. ''Allez-vous-en a Paris," writes the 
King on one occasion to the distracted minister of Finance, 
^'et trouves de I' argent en la boete a I' enchant eur." 

Whether the money for Langeais was found in the Magi- 
cian's box or elsewhere, there was enough of it to do the 
work handsomely and well, and it has had the good fortune 
to be admirably restored in our day. Jean Bourre, at about 
the same time that Langeais was being built, bought for him- 
self a property in Anjou called Plessis-du-Vent. He changed 
the name to Plessis-Bourre and built there a chateau, which 
is still standing, and which closely resembles that of Langeais. 

The plan of Langeais consists of three parts, a fagade ter- 
minating at either end in a tower, a wing, and the donjon where 
a garrison, sore pressed, might make its final stand. This 
donjon was shut off from the rest of the building by an enor- 
mously thick wall, now pierced by a passageway, but which 
then could only be reached from the battlements. Along the 
roof on the side towards the town runs a chemin de ronde, par- 
tially overhanging the walls and provided at short intervals 
with openings in the floor, through which missiles and boiling 
pitch and oil could be dropped on the heads of besieging foes. 

Up here, looking through the loopholes, one understands 

152 



APPROACH TO THE GATE OF THE CHATEAU OF LANGEAIS 



LANGEAIS 

better why Fulk Nerra planted his keep at this particular spot, 
especially when bearing in mind that the system of dykes and 
levees by which the waters of the Loire are now confined to 
their channel had not then been constructed, and that the river 
which seems so far away to-day once washed the foot of the 
rock on which the stronghold stands. 

From this level can be seen the forest of Chinon lying off 
to the south, and near its edge the castle of Usse, supposed to 
be the scene of a XVth century romance once very popular: 
the Hystoire et plaisante cronique du petit Jehan de Saintre et 
de la jeune dame des Belles-Cousines, a fourteenth century 
crusader, and a Princess of France. 

On the northeastern horizon rise the twin towers of the 
Cathedral of Tours; nearer, on the Cher, is Villandry, where 
Henry II of England had his final interview with Philip 
Augustus, King of France, and with his own son Richard.^ 
Still nearer, but further north, is the "Pile de Cinq-Mars," as 
the lofty tower is called, which, with its five little pyramids 
and the absence of any kind of opening, has thus far bafiled 
the archaeologists. They think it may be of Roman origin and 
that it served as a beacon, but no one certainly knows. 

About a mile from this tower once stood the chateau of the 
Marquis de Cinq-Mars, a youth, who, after owing all his good 
fortune to Cardinal Richelieu, plotted his benefactor's death. 
The Cardinal, in order to counteract Mile, de Hautefort's in- 
fluence over the King, Louis XIII, introduced young Cinq- 
Mars at court. The move was so successful that in six months 
Mile, de Hautefort had been sent away, and Cinq-Mars was 
in high favor; though only eighteen, Louis had even made 
him Grand ficuyer of France. Richelieu, however, would not 

1 See p. 117. 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

take "Monsieur le grand's" new dignities seriously; he treated 
him Hke a school-boy and scolded him sharply when he meddled 
in politics. It was never a hard matter to find enemies of 
the Cardinal, and the Marquis, much offended, hatched the 
plot known as the "conspiracy of Cinq-Mars." It failed con- 
spicuously, for the conspirators were as so many babes 
in the hands of Richelieu. Before the first step could be taken 
he had every detail laid before him; the proofs were shown 
to the King, who was powerless to save his favorite, and in 
September, 1642, Cinq-Mars and his friend and confidant, 
Auguste de Thou, were beheaded. 

The one great historical event of which Langeais was the 
scene was the marriage there in December, 1491, of Anne of 
Brittany and Charles VIII, and it was in the Granxi'Salle that 
the wedding festivities took place. The bride, the elder daugh- 
ter and heiress of Francis II, Duke of Brittany, was a self- 
willed little person who, though barely twelve years old at 
the time of her father's death, had formed her own line of policy 
and was bent at all costs on preserving the independence of 
her duchy. In order to do this she determined never to 
marry her suzerain, the King of France, if she could possibly 
avoid it. Her position was a difficult one. In her infancy she 
had been betrothed to Prince Edward of England, the son of 
Edward IV, but he had been murdered in the Tower of London 
by his uncle of Gloucester, afterward Richard III. 

Now, all her neighbors were wanting to marry her and to 
get control of her duchy, without regard to discrepancy of 
age or the circumstance of having another wife already. There 
was, first, Maximilian of Austria, titular King of the Romans, 
the son of the Emperor Frederick III, whose wife, Mary of 
Burgundy, had died in 1482 ; then came Alain, Sieur d'Albret, 

156 



VIEW OF CHATEAU OF LANGEAIS FROM THE COURT-YARD 



LANGEAIS 

also a widower, forty-five years old, and the father of eight 
children; Louis, Duke of Orleans, married already to Jeanne 
of France ; and finally, King Charles himself, but twenty years 
of age and in many respects the most suitable aspirant of them 
all, though he, too, had been married when twelve years old 
to Maximilian's daughter, Margaret, aged three. 

All the suitors sent armies into Brittany to conduct their 
wooings; Maximilian's Flemish and Spanish troops threatened 
Rennes, while Charles's army pillaged and wasted the sur- 
rounding country. The Breton Marshal de Reux, a partisan 
of Alain d'Albret, was treating with the English and receiving 
reinforcements from them at ISfantes, where he had set up 
an opposition government to that of the young Duchess estab- 
lished at Rennes. In 1490 Anne's advisors decided that her 
best hope lay in the support of Austria. She and Maximilian 
were accordingly married by proxy, in December of that year ; 
but the future Emperor, who had not time even to go to his 
own wedding, was far too much occupied with affairs in the 
Netherlands to do anything for Brittany, and the marriage 
brought no relief to that unhappy province. Then d'Albret, 
angered at the somewhat scornful rejection of his own suit, 
gave Nantes into the hands of the French ; the most influential 
among the Breton nobles began to waver ; and finally a powerful 
army, raised by the Regent of France, laid siege to Rennes. 

Money and food soon gave out and the foreign mercenaries 
revolted. Charles offered to treat. He promised the Duchess 
a hundred thousand crowns a year to resign the government 
of Brittany; she could select her own place of residence — Nantes 
and Rennes excepted — and she was to have her choice among 
three husbands, Louis of Luxembourg, the Duke of Nemours, 
and the Count of Angouleme. 

159 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

To these offers Anne replied that she was already married 
to the King of the Romans, and should he fail to acknowledge 
her she should still consider herself his wife and never under 
any circumstances would she take another husband. Should 
he die, thus leaving her free to remarry, she would consider 
no one but a king, or, at the very least, the son of a king. 
The French bribed her foreign troops to desert her, and per- 
suaded her advisors that the only course left her was to 
marry their King. Dunois, Louis of Orleans, and others of 
her counsellors argued with her for several days, but without 
making any impression. At last her confessor told her that 
"God and the Church required this sacrifice for the good of 
the country and in the interests of peace." She yielded, and 
the betrothal took place at once in the chapel of Notre Dame, 
just outside the gates of Rennes. The marriage between herself 
and Maximilian was declared illegal, on the ground that it 
had been contracted without the consent of her suzerain, 
Charles, and at the same time a dispensation was obtained to 
annul the infant marriage between Charles and Maximilian's 
daughter Margaret. 

At last one winter morning, accompanied by a small party 
of her followers, Anne set forth to ride to Langeais, then a 
royal fortress, a distance of about a hundred and twenty miles 
from Rennes as the crow flies. At Langeais she found Charles 
awaiting her, and the marriage took place at once in the church 
of the chateau, December, 1491, the bride being attired for 
the ceremony in a gown of cloth-of-gold trimmed with one 
hundred and sixty sable skins, and costing 126,000 francs in 
modern money. 

Among the witnesses, none, we may be sure, took a more 
lively interest in this marriage than the Duke of Orleans. He 

160 



LANGEAIS 

had always been fond of the httle Breton Princess, who, as a 
child at her father's court, had been wont to amuse him with 
her precocity and quaint ways. Seven years before, when she 
was still hardly more than an infant, a marriage contract had 
even been drawn up between them, but at that time Louis had 
been unable to get a divorce from his cousin, Jeanne of France. 
Now, however, a special clause in the contract provided that 
should Charles die leaving no son his widow was to marry his 
successor. This could only be Louis himself, who was a great- 
grandson of Charles V and heir presumptive to the throne. 

The bride, we are told, had dark eyes, pencilled eyebrows, 
a broad forehead, finely modelled nose— slightly retrousse — 
round, pink cheeks, a curved mouth, and dark hair falling over 
her shoulders. The description of the bridegroom sounds less 
alluring. Though he was only twenty-one, it might be that 
of an old man. He is said to have had a bad complexion, a 
long, hooked nose, protruding under lip, scanty beard, and 
one side of his face different from the other. 

There are to be seen to-day in the Great Hall at Langeais 
three very interesting portraits ; they are two paintings of Anne 
of Brittany and Louis XH, framed together; and a bust of 
Charles VHI, which, it must be admitted, fully justifies the 
above description. 

Shortly after the marriage ceremony the Queen was crowned 
at St. Denis, a touching little figure robed all in white damask. 
Louis of Orleans held the crown of France above the girlish 
head, with its plaits of dark hair falling over the shoulders, 
too slight and frail itself to support the weight. 

By this marriage the duchy of Brittany, the last of the great 
feudal provinces to preserve its independence, became absorbed 
into the French kingdom. This achievement was the final 

i6i 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

triumph of the government of Anne de Beaujeu, who had been 
Regent during her brother's nonage.^ After his marriage 
Charles took the direction of affairs into his own hands. 

The foundations of the Church of St. Sauveur, where the 
marriage of Anne and Charles probably took place, are in the 
park of the chateau. The church was founded early in the 
Xllth century by Fulk the Young, great-grandson of Fulk 
Nerra. While on the First Crusade he married Milicent, 
daughter of Baldwin II, King of Jerusalem, and he brought 
back with him from the Holy Land some fragments of the 
Holy Sepulchre and of the "Cradle of the Saviour." It was to 
provide a worthy shrine for these relics that he built the church 
of the chateau of Langeais, then a part of his domains. 

Near the remains of the church is Fulk Nerra's keep, a mere 
ruin, part of whose walls have crumbled wholly away, while 
the rest seem only to be held in place by the supporting arms 
of the ivy that creeps and climbs and enfolds them in a strong 
embrace. 

One of Rabelais's patrons, whom he followed to Italy and 
then back again to Touraine, was Du Bellay, Sieur de Langeais, 
and a Renaissance house that faces the chateau from across 
the narrow street is pointed out as having been occupied by 
the jovial doctor up to the time of his patron's death in 1543. 

At the time of the Revolution Langeais belonged to the 
Duke of Luynes ; it was confiscated and in the early part of the 
XlXth century served as a municipal prison. Finally, after 
many vicissitudes, it was bought by its present owner, M. Sicg- 

^ In 1488, Maximilian of Austria, Alain ber of French nobles and prelates who 
d'Albret, and the Duke of Orleans had had joined the plot were thrown into 
allied themselves with the English in an prison, the Duke of Orleans among 
effort to overthrow the Beaujeu govern- them. It was then that Philip de Com- 
ment. The attempt failed, and a num- mines "tasted the cage at Loches." 

162 



CHATEAU OF LANGEAIS, DRAWBRIDGE 



LANGEAIS 

fried, who has restored it and presented it to the Institut de 
France/ though reserving the right to occupy it during his own 
Hfetime. 

From the street, now on a level with what was the line of 
the moat, you mount a flight of stone steps to the drawbridge. 
Beyond this an archway leads to the wide, sunny court, nearly 
surrounded on three sides by buildings, but stretching up and 
away on the fourth to the park, where the remains of Fulk 
Nerra's keep are seen. The upper level of the court is covered 
by a square parterre, planted in a stiff pattern like a rug. Four 
towers, each with a spiral stair, lead to the different parts of 
the building. 

The two most interesting rooms at Langeais are the Guard 
room and the Grand' Salle. The former has a monumental 
chimney-piece and a frieze in which the arms of Anne of Brit- 
tany, the leashed greyhounds and the ermine, appear, and her 
device — potius mori quam foedari (better to die than to be tar- 
nished). The decorations, also modern, of the adjoining room 
have the letters A K introduced, for Anne and Karolus ( Charles 
VIII), with their devices and the two crowns joined by cor- 
deliers. 

An official of the Institut de France conducts the visitor over 
the castle, through what appears to be an interminable suc- 
cession of richly-tiled floors, of tapestry-covered walls, of 
antiquely furnished apartments. Passing suddenly from the 
palpitating heat of the summer day into these cool, shaded 
rooms, filled with the odor of roses, of old books, of old tapestry, 
of old furniture, a sort of somnolence settles down upon you. 

1 The Institut de France is at Paris. Belles Lettres. des Sciences, des Beaux- 
It includes the Academic Francaise and Arts, et des Sciences Morales et Poli- 
the four Academies des Inscriptions et tiques. 

165 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

Here are Flemish cabinets, Italian tapestries, Dutch wood- 
carvings, Spanish leather-work; everything of the "epoch." 
"These bedsteads were designed by Viollet-le-Duc." "Observe 
that the curtain is knotted about the right-hand post at the 
foot after the manner of the time." Rich and handsome and 
imposing as all this restoration is, yet one feels that for pure 
enjoyment it is better after all to be left in peace to idealize the 
reconstructing for oneself, as amidst the ruins of Chinon or 
even the scanty remains of Plessis-les-Tours. 



1 66 



AMBOISE 



CHAPTER VII 



AMBOISE 



THE brief reign and untoward death of Charles VIII, 
the story of whose marriage to Anne, Duchess of Brit- 
tany, at Langeais was told in the last chapter, are both 
closely associated with the chateau of Amboise. 

This chateau, perched upon a wedge-shaped rock on the left 
bank of the Loire, is thought like so many others to be of 
Roman origin; there is a tradition that it was rebuilt as early 
as 375. However this may be, Clovis took it from the Visigoths 
early in the Vlth century and his descendants held it for more 
than three hundred years. Then Louis the Stammerer gave 
it to Ingelger, father of the first Count of Anjou, as a reward 
for his valor in repulsing the Normans. From the Counts of 
Anjou, Amboise passed to one Hugh, a baron who had accom- 
panied William the Conqueror to England and had won great 
wealth in the expedition. Hugh is described as "the stem of 
that illustrious house of Amboise which won such renown for 
itself as to be called the race of Mars." Nevertheless, Louis 
d' Amboise, its representative in Charles VILs reign, having 
joined in a plot against the favorite, Georges de la Tremoille, 
in 143 1, lost all his property and nearly lost his head as well. 

The chateau was sequestered, and thenceforth belonged either 

171 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

to the crown or to the Orleans family until 1762, when it was 
given to the Duke of Choiseul in exchange for his estate 
of Pompadour. 

The visitor to Amboise after leaving the station and passing 
through the uninteresting modern town, emerges upon a broad 
quay, close to the XVth century church of Notre Dame du 
Bout-des-Ponts. This building is so plain as to be almost barn- 
like, but the interior, wide, low and without either aisles or 
choir, has a quaint and musty charm of its own. Outside, 
beside the door, the heights of some of the great floods of the 
Loire have been marked on the stone. Quite astounding they 
seem in view of the size of that tranquil stream as one sees it 
in midsummer. 

At this point the bed of the Loire is so wide as to be spanned 
by two bridges thrown out from an island in the centre of 
the stream, the He d'Or, or, as it is now called from a Xlllth 
century church, the He St. Jean. 

From the second bridge, after the island is passed, there is 
an unimpeded view of the opposite shore. Above the river 
and wide stretch of yellow sands lie, first the line of solid stone 
quays. Above the quays is a fringe of gay little houses and 
cafes, with gardens and vine-embowered balconies, where people 
sit and sip their coffee and watch the river and the women beat- 
ing clothes in the water, and the peasants and donkeys and 
automobiles and soldiers and priests and tourists as they pass 
back and forward across the bridges. Above the houses 
comes a mighty mass of rock and solid masonry and buttressed 
wall, and over these, the chateau, light, smiling and habitable- 
seeming, with peaked roof and carved windows, tall chimneys 
and pointed tourelles, looking almost out of place on so grim 
and massive a base. 

172 



CHATEAU AND TOWN OF AMBOISE, AS SEEN FROM THE 
OPPOSITE BANK OF THE LOIRE 



AMBOISE 

From the bridge you are facing the broad end of the tri- 
angular-shaped height on which the castle stands. On the 
extreme left is the park, indicated by a dark mass of foliage 
and supported on heavy, bastioned walls terminating in the 
huge round Tour des Minimes, whose base plunges down to 
the level of the house below.^ Connected with the Tour des 
Minimes by a lofty spiral-stair tower is the principal fagade, 
built by Charles VIII and called the logis dii Roi. It has a 
graceful arcaded gallery surmounted on the main floor by a 
line of tall windows opening on a wrought-iron balcony of 
XVIIth century workmanship and known as the "Huguenot 
Balcony." Above is the steep roof added by Francis I, broken 
by six Renaissance dormer windows and a number of high 
brick chimneys. This part of the chateau has been thoroughly 
restored by members of the Orleans family, the present pro- 
prietors. 

Formerly a line of buildings extended on the south to where 
a great round buttress marks the angle of the rock, and thence 
in an easterly direction, past the chapel of St. Hubert, to the 
other round tower, called the Tour Cesar, or Heurtault. Now, 
however, all these intervening buildings have disappeared, leav- 
ing the little flamboyant chapel quite disengaged, and poised 
upon its solitary pier like some winged thing about to take 
flight. The rest of the space is laid out in terraces and gardens. 

The chateau is reached by a vaulted passageway cut through 
the oldest part of the pile, the remains of the feudal fortress 
of the Counts of Anjou, upon the ruins of which the present 

*So called from the near-by Minimes In the convent grounds are a series 

convent founded by Charles VIII, on of subterranean store-rooms for wine 

the spot where he went on foot to re- and grain, popularly known as "Caesar's 

ceive Saint Francis de Paul on the Granaries." Their date and origin have 

latter's arrival in France, (see p. 47)- never been ascertained. 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

building stands. About half-way up the ascent you pass the 
stables, dating only from Louis Philippe's time, and at the top 
you emerge close to the chapel of St. Hubert. This exquisite 
little building was completed before Charles VIII, going down 
into Italy to conquer a kingdom, opened the way for a counter 
mvasion by Italian craftsmen into France. It is, therefore, 
wholly French, both in design and workmanship. The bas- 
relief over the door, representing scenes from the life of Saint 
Hubert, belongs to the Tourangeau school of Michael Colombe. 
Above it is an admirable modern group of the Virgin and Child, 
between the kneeling figures of Charles VIII and Anne of 
Brittany, placed there when the Duke of Orleans restored the 
chapel in the XlXth century. The interior is extraordinarily 
rich, the surface of the stone being covered with a delicate fret- 
work of carving, representing branches of trees, vines, roots, 
gnarled and twisted trunks, leaves and twigs, everything, in 
short, that can suggest the forest glades in which Saint Hubert, 
the patron saint of huntsmen, made his home. The windows are 
filled with modern stained glass, too gaudy for the surroundings. 
In this chapel are interred what are believed to be the bones 
of Leonardo da Vinci, placed there in 1879. In 15 16, after 
the taking of Milan, King Francis I brought Leonardo da Vinci 
back with him to France, and established him in a house called 
Clos-Luce, still standing on the south side of the town of 
Amboise. Here on 2d May, 15 19, he died, leaving but few 
traces of his sojourn on French soil.^ They buried him, ac- 
cording to his own wish, in the cloister of the ancient church 

^ While at Clos-Luce Leonardo made Loire. Mr. T. A. Cook thinks he also 

designs for a reconstruction of the painted there the St. John Baptist of the 

chateau of Amboise, which were never Louvre gallery. See "Spirals in Nature 

carried out, as well as some engineering and Art," Theodore Andrea Cook, 
plans and a hydrographic map of the 

176 



AM BOISE 

of the chateau, dedicated to Saint Florentin by Fulk Nerra, 
Count of Anjou. During the Revolution this church was sold 
as national property and destroyed, no one at that time giving 
a thought to the tomb of the great Italian. A half-century went 
by, then it occurred to someone that an effort should be made 
to recover his bones. In 1863, accordingly, M. Arsene Hous- 
saye, Inspector of the Fine Arts at Paris, was authorized to 
excavate the site. He found what he believed to be the remains 
he was in search of, and, though no positive identification was 
possible, these were re-interred in the chapel of St. Hubert. 
The French Government placed a memorial bust on the site 
of the original tomb with the dates 1452-15 19. 

During the Hundred Years War, and up to the time of 
Charles VIFs death, Amboise served mainly as a royal fortress.^ 
Louis XI partly rebuilt it as a residence for his Queen, Charlotte 
of Savoy, and there the Dauphin, afterwards Charles VIII, was 
born on 30th June, 1470. He was a delicate child and Louis 
fussed over him like an old woman. The townspeople were 
ordered to discontinue their custom of attending service in the 
church of the chateau for fear of introducing infectious diseases, 
^nd were told to build a church for themselves in the town below. 
They did so, the existing church of Notre Dame. On the other 
hand, the King organized a sort of civic guard for the better 
protection of the castle in times of disturbance. "Betake your- 
selves to the castle," he writes to the burghers, "whenever there 
is need, with your spoons and your sauce-pans and drink wine 
from my cellars, but see that you surrender it to no one but 
myself." 

For eight years after Louis XI's death his son Charles con- 

1 Although Louis d' Amboise recovered the rest of his estates after the disgrace 
of La Tremoille, Amboise was especially excepted. 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

tinued to live quietly at Amboise, occupied with adding to the 
chateau, and with reading romances and filling his brain with 
dreams of chivalric enterprises ; his masterful sister, the Regent, 
Anne de Beaujeu, meanwhile governed the kingdom. In 1491, 
however, soon after his marriage, Charles took the management 
of affairs into his own hands, and two years later all his roman- 
cing and novel-reading bore fruit. He determined that it would , 
be a fine thing to ride forth and conquer the kingdom of Naples, 
to which the House of Valois had a nebulous claim.^ The 
Queen, hard-headed little Bretonne that she was, thought the 
enterprise foolish and did her best to dissuade him, but Charles 
was very obstinate, and he had, moreover, set his heart upon 
seeing the famed palaces and gardens of the south with a view 
to further improvements at Amboise. 

At this time, in addition to the chapel of St. Hubert, he had 
already completed the wing facing the Loire called the logis dii 
Roi and some other buildings since destroyed, and had begun the 
two great towers of Minimes and Heurault. These towers 
were, and still are, unique in France. In construction they 
consist of two towers each, the inner ones forming the central 
columns of support for what ordinarily would be stairs, but 
which here are inclined planes. In the Tour Heurtault the 
rise is so gradual and the width of the plane so great, that 
horsemen and even carriages can mount it without difficulty, 
and it served as the main entrance to the chateau. The sup- 
ports of this spiral plane are a series of pointed arches, their 
bases carved with grotesque figures, thrown from the central 

^ The royal families of Arragon and Naples by Charles of Anjou, brother of 

of France both laid claim to the crown Saint Louis, and (2) on its having been 

of Naples, and in 1492 Ferdinand I of left by will to Louis XI at the death of 

Arragon was in possession. The French Charles du Maine, the last representa- 

lawyers made out a case for Charles tive of the second French House of 

VIII based (i) on the conquest of Anjou. 

178 



PORTAL OF CHAPEL OF ST. HUBERT 



AMBOISE 

tower to the outer walls; a construction of enormous difficulty 
owing to the great weight, the oblique direction of the arches, 
and the varying width of the intervening spaces. The logis du 
Roi contains the summer and winter Guard rooms and the 
Salles des fitats from which opens the "Huguenot Balcony." 

In the summer of 1494 Charles set forth on his great expe- 
dition very gallant and hopeful, and indeed the advance through 
Italy was nothing short of a succession of triumphs. At Milan 
the new Duke, Ludovico the Moor, made a treaty with the 
French King; at Florence Pierro de Medicis did the same, 
though Savonarola remonstrated and tried hard to arouse the 
people to resist it; and at Rome the Pope, Alexander VI, was 
equally affable; finally, when the army reached Naples in Feb- 
ruary the ruling House of Arragon was driven out and the 
capital occupied almost without fighting.^ Charles remained 
there three months busily employed in collecting books, 
statues, furniture and tapestries, and in visiting the palaces and 
gardens. "You would not believe," he writes to Pierre de 
Bourbon, "how beautiful the gardens are in this town. On 
my faith, it seems as though nothing were needed but the 
presence of Adam and Eve to turn it into a veritable earthly 
paradise !" 

In May the French army set out on the return march, but 
this was nearly as disastrous as the advance had been fortunate. 
By October, when they regained their own country, nearly 
every advantage won in Italy had been lost. The Venetian 
troops, moreover, had captured the baggage wagons containing 
all the King's rich collections; but far more serious than any 
of these misfortunes, the Dauphin, described by Gentile Becchi, 

^ Ferdinand I of Arragon had died II, at the moment when the French were 
the year before. His successor, Alfonso, before the walls of Naples. 
abdicated in favor of his son, Ferdinand 

181 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURATNE 

the Florentine Ambassador, as a bel enfant, le joyaii du roy- 
aume, had died. The King and Queen shut themselves up 
at Amboise and brooded so heavily over their loss that the 
courtiers organized a fete in order to divert their minds. Un- 
fortunately the Duke of Orleans, whom the Dauphin's death 
had made heir presumptive to the throne, entered too heartily 
into the spirit of the occasion, and danced and skipped about 
so joyously that the Queen's feelings were outraged. She re- 
proached him angrily for his conduct and for some months he 
was obliged to absent himself from court. Hardly more than two 
years later Charles himself died at Amboise under distressing 
circumstances. "The eight day of Aprill," writes Philippe de 
Commines,^ "the yere 1498, upon Palm Sunday even, the King 
being in this glorie as touching the world, and in this goodminde 
towards God: departed out of the chamber of Queene Anne, 
Duches of Britaine, his wife, leading her with him to see the ten- 
nice plaiers in the trenches of the castle, whither he had never led 
her before, and they two entred togither into a gallerie, called 
Haquelebac's gallerie, because the said Haquelebac had in times 
past held watch and ward in it. It was the uncleanest place 
about the castle, and the entrie into it was broken downe : more- 
over, the King, as he entred, knocked his browe against the 
doors; notwithstanding that he were of verie small stature. 
Afterward he beheld a great while the tennice playing, talking 
familiarly with all men. My selfe was not present there, but 
his confessor, the Bishop of Angers, and those of his chamber 
that were neerest about him, have enformed me of this I write : 
for as touching my selfe, I was gone home eight dales before to 
my house. The last word that he spake being in health was, 
that he hoped never after to commit deadly sin nor veniall if 

iDanett's Commines. The Tudor Translations, XVIII. 
182 



CHAPEL OF ST. HUBERT AND TOUR HEURTAULT 



AMBOISE 

he could: in uttering the which words he fell backward and 
lost his speech, about two of the clocke at after noone, and 
abode in this gallerie till eleven of the clocke at night. Thrise 
he recovered his speech, but it continued not with him, as the 
said confessor told me, who had shriven him twise that weeke, 
once of ordinarie, and once for those that came to be cured of 
the King's evill. Every man that listed entred into the gallerie, 
where he lay upon an olde mattresse of strawe, from the which 
he never arose till he gave up the ghost, so that nine bowers 
he continued upon it. The saide confessor, who was continually 
by him, told me that all the three times he recovered his speech 
he cried : My God, and the glorious Virgin Marie, Saint Claude, 
and Saint Blase, help me. Thus departed out of this world 
this mightie puissant Prince in this miserable place, not being 
able to recover one poore chamber to die in: notwithstanding 
he had so many goodly houses, and built one so sumptuous at 
that present."^ 

A little door at the end of a terrace at Amboise is erroneously 
pointed out as the one against which King Charles struck his 
head on that fatal Palm Sunday. The Haquelebac gallery and 
the door leading to it were both destroyed in the last century, 
and this door, which is surmounted by the porcupine of Louis 
XII, dates only from that monarch's time. 

As soon as the elaborate funeral ceremonies were over the 
new King, Louis XII, prepared to carry out the provisions of 
the marriage contract of Langeais.^ In the month of August 
hearings were begun before an ecclesiastical court with the 
object of annulling the marriage contracted twenty-two years 
before between the King and Princess Jeanne of France. The 

^ The account-books of Amboise show the chateau, of which there were at that 
that King Charles had spent 5,700 Uvres time forty-five, 
on the furnishings alone of the beds in 2 See p. 161. 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

proceedings dragged on for four months and the unfortunate 
Princess, although subjected to the most humihating questions, 
was the only person concerned to emerge from the affair with 
credit. She constantly affirmed and with great dignity and 
simplicity that there was no cause for which she could legally 
be repudiated, but in spite of her protestations the marriage was 
declared void. The Queen went into a dignified retirement at 
Bourges and devoted herself to good works, but from the people 
she got justice. "There goes Caiaphas !" they would cry after 
the ecclesiastics who composed the court, "There goes Herod! 
There goes Pilate ! The false judges who said that that high- 
born lady is not the true Queen of France !" 

These things made the project of Louis's re-marriage with 
herself very distasteful to Anne of Brittany. At first she flatly 
refused, declaring that "all the decrees in the world would never 
make anything of her but the King's concubine !" but she soon 
gave in, and on 8th January, 1499, ^^ss than nine months after 
King Charles's death, she and Louis were married at Nantes. 
They spent the rest of the winter travelling about in Brittany 
and France, and in April were to make their state entry into 
Amboise. The town outdid itself in the preparation of tri- 
umphal arches, garlands, and processions; the entire space 
between the chateau and the river was converted into a covered 
pavilion, in the centre of which rose two columns supporting, 
respectively, an ermine and a porcupine, from whose mouths 
flowed streams of wine; and canopies covered with red and 
white damask were erected for the King and Queen. The 
latter alone, however, appeared to take part in the ceremony, 
and the absence of the King has been oddly attributed to une 
attention delicate, a dread on his part of arousing painful mem- 
ories in his wife's mind by appearing at that place by her side* 

186 



AMBOISE 

Louis XII added a wing to the chateau of Amboise, the one 
still standing at right angles with the logis du Roi. In it are 
seen his own and the Queen's apartments, all now very beauti- 
fully restored. The King also made some improvements in 
the gardens, already under his predecessor, famed for their 
beauty. There is a tradition that the first orange-trees seen 
in France were planted there by Charles VIIFs Italian land- 
scape-gardener, Passelo da Mercogliano. 

Usually, however, Louis XII preferred the old chateau of 
the Orleans family at Blois, where he was born, and in 1518 
Amboise was assigned as the residence of Louise of Savoy and 
of her son, Francis, Prince of Angouleme, afterwards Francis 
I, who was then heir presumptive to the throne and betrothed 
to Claude of France, the elder of the two daughters of King 
Louis and Anne of Brittany. Although this Prince did some 
building at Amboise, he was chiefly occupied after his accession 
with his great constructions at Blois, at Chambord and at 
Fontainebleau. It was, however, at Amboise that he mag- 
nificently entertained Charles V when the Emperor passed 
through France in 1539. The great Heurtault tower was hung 
on that occasion with tapestries from foot to summit and lighted 
by so many torches that it was aussi clair qu'en un compagne 
en pleine midy, as the old account puts it. 

In Henry IPs time the court still came occasionally to 
Amboise, and Diane of Poitiers bought ground there adjoining 
the royal gardens and had plans drawn up for une maison, 
jardins, vergers et aultres choses, which she proposed to con- 
struct, but never did. During the Religious Wars the forti- 
fications of the chateau were strengthened and the place 
assumed more and more the character of a stronghold to which 
the royal family might retire in times of disturbance. It is 

187 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

in this phase that we find it becoming in the second half of the 
XVIth century the scene of one of the most tragic events of 
that stormy period. 

On the accession of Francis II, at the age of fifteen, his 
wife's two uncles, Francis, Duke of Guise, and Cardinal Lor- 
raine, got complete control of the government, to the great 
dissatisfaction not only of the Protestant party, but of the 
Queen-mother and of the rival House of Bourbon. Early in 
the year 1560 a plot was formed to break down the power of 
the Guises. The chateau of Blois, where the court was assem- 
bled, was to be seized, the Duke and the Cardinal were to be 
made prisoners and impeached before the States-General, and 
Anthony de Bourbon, King of Navarre, and his brother, the 
Prince of Conde, were to be placed at the head of affairs. Al- 
though the conspiracy was actually directed by Conde, the 
nominal leader was an obscure personage, named La Renaudie, 
who had been condemned some time previously for forgery, and 
had fled to Geneva, where he had been converted to Protes- 
antism. Recruits on being enrolled were required to take an 
oath of allegiance to "the silent Captain," by whom Conde was 
understood to be meant, but his name was never used. 

Towards the end of February, when plans to surprise Blois 
were nearly completed the conspirators were thrown into sudden 
confusion by the unexpected departure of the court for Amboise. 
Everything had to be changed, and, moreover, just at this 
juncture the Guises got their first intimation of the plot. Ar- 
rived at Amboise, they instantly took measures for their own 
safety. The gate leading into the town was walled up; the 
castle guards were replaced by partisans of their own; squads 
of cavalry patrolled the neighboring highroads, and the royal 
garrisons at Orleans, Bourges, Tours and Angers were put 

188 



TOUR MINIMES AND WING OF LOUIS XII, AMBOISE 



AMBOISE 

under the command of captains upon whom the Duke could 
absolutely rely. From time to time further details of the plot 
leaked out, all tending to show that the person of the King 
was not in the smallest danger, and that the Guises alone were 
the object of attack. This being perfectly understood, the court 
bore the two ministers a hearty grudge for the confinement and 
restriction to which all were subjected merely to provide for 
their safety. 

The conspirators, meanwhile, had established their head- 
quarters at a neighboring chateau called Noizay, from whence 
orders for the attack on the castle were to be issued. Before 
the appointed day, however, this place was surprised by a party 
of royal troops, and the garrison was captured en masse. After 
this check everything went wrong. Conde, who arrived at 
Court on the very day of the disaster, instantly abandoned 
the cause and thenceforth thought only of how to put the best 
face upon the affair, while his deluded followers continued to 
plot and plan, still counting upon his help. 

The arrangement was to surprise the castle on the night of 
the 1 6th March, and the main body of the Protestants was 
to come from Blois in time to lead the attack. Unfortunately 
they mistook the road and only arrived at daybreak, the Guises 
meanwhile having been fully informed of their approach. The 
attempt was an utter failure; not a single one of all the sym- 
pathizers upon whose cooperation from within the chateau 
they had counted was left, and after the first repulse the attack- 
ing party fled in disorder. Parties of cavalry were sent to 
chase the discomfited Protestants and returned to the chateau 
bringing in their prisoners in batches. So harmless did these 
appear that for a time the Guises talked of a general pardon, 
but only for a time. As they realized that they had been de- 

191 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

nounced throughout the country as enemies of the State they 
became furious. The Duke had himself named Lieutenant- 
general of the kingdom with unrestricted powers, and decrees 
were issued condemning all the leaders of the plot to death. La 
Renaudie had already been killed in a skirmish in the neigh- 
boring forest. 

Before long the entire Protestant community became in- 
volved in an indiscriminate slaughter. Farmers, artisans, mer- 
chants, non-combatants of every degree, were seized by the 
soldiers in the fields and roads and woods, and either killed 
on the spot or dragged off to be hanged from improvised gibbets 
in the chateau, or else tied hand and foot and flung into the 
Loire. For the chiefs, a more dramatic ending was reserved. 

Towards the end of March notices were read from the pulpits 
of the neighboring parish churches of an *'act of faith" shortly 
to be accomplished at the chateau. As this was understood to 
mean nothing else than the execution of all the remaining 
prisoners the interest was widespread. On the eve of the 
appointed day people poured in in crowds from the surrounding 
country; thousands are said to have camped out all night on 
a nearby hilltop, while dormer windows and roofs commanding 
a view of the scaffold were leased for prices unheard of till 
that day. 

Within the castle all was arranged as for a fete; seats were 
erected in tiers for the accommodation of the ladies and gentle- 
men of the court around the open space where the executions 
were to take place, while the wrought-iron balcony opening 
from the logis du Roi was reserved for the royal family and 
distinguished guests. 

Immediately after dinner on 30th March the band of fifty- 
seven Protestant gentlemen was conducted to the foot of the 

192 



CHATEAU OF AMBOISE, CHAPEL QF ST. HUBERT AND 
TOUR HEURTAULT 



AMBOISE 

scafifold, chanting Clement Marot's metrical version of the 
LXVIth psalm : 

Dieu nous soit doux et favorable, 
Nous benissant par sa bonte, 
Et de son visage adorable 
Nous fasse luire la clarte. 

The Duke of Guise on horseback took his place close to the 
scaffold, the benches were filled with groups of chattering and 
expectant courtiers, and above, the reluctant King, who would 
fain have stayed away, but was afraid to, took his seat upon 
the balcony between his young Queen, Mary Stuart, and his 
mother, Catherine de Medicis. With them were Cardinal Lor- 
raine, the Papal Nuncio, and the Duke of Orleans. Just as 
the signal to begin was about to be given, Conde stepped 
through the window and took his place beside the Queen. At 
the sight of their "silent Captain" the group at the foot of the 
scaffold with one accord saluted, and Conde gravely returned 
the salute. Then the first name was called and the first head 
was laid upon the block, followed by another and still another, 
the sound of the chanting growing ever fainter and fainter, 
until at last one voice alone, that of the Baron of Castelnau- 
Chalosse, was heard: 

'Dieu nous soit doux et favorable . . . 

The executioner raised his axe, the Cardinal gave the signal, 
and the last head fell. 

The Court by this time was thoroughly surfeited, while the 
young King was barely able to sit the spectacle out. To be 
^'rid of the blood," therefore they all took horse on the following 
day and rode off to Chenonceaux, where the Queen-mother 
soon made them forget everything in a series of festivities. 

195 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

The country, however, did not forget, and one result of the 
butcheries at Amboise was to plunge France into thirty-five 
years of civil war, lightened, it may be, though for only a brief 
period, by the "Edict of Amboise," published three years later, 
when the Queen-mother was forced to grant liberty to the 
Huguenots for the free exercise of their religion except in 
certain towns and districts. 

The chateau was never again very popular as a dwelling- 
place. Richelieu turned it into a state prison and sent Cesar, 
Duke of Vendome, and his brother, the Grand Prior, there 
after the discovery of the Chalais conspiracy.^ 

Fouquet, the disgraced minister of Louis XIV, was also 
imprisoned at Amboise, and in 1663 La Fontaine, his ardent 
admirer, made a sort of passionate pilgrimage thither to view 
the scene of his friend's sufferings : 

"They have walled up the windows of his room," he wrote 
to his wife, "and I could not get in, as the soldier who took 
me around had no key. All I could do was to stand in front 
of the door and try to picture it for myself : 

Chambre muree, etroite place, 
Quelque peu d'air pour toute grace, 

Jours sans soleil, 

Nuits sans sommeil, 
Trois portes en six pieds d'espace! 

If night had not fallen they would never have dragged me 
from the spot!" 

Although subsequently used occasionally as a state prison, 
Amboise has for the most part been the property of the Orleans 
family since the beginning of the XVIIth century, when it 
was given to Gaston of Orleans.^ At the Revolution it was 

1 See page 286. 

2 Before the Revolution it belonged for a short time to the Duke of Choiseul. 

196 



CHATEAV OF AMBOISE: VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE OVER 

THE LOIRE 



^...gUilM'y 



% 




AMBOISE 

taken from the Duchess of Orleans and later given by Napoleon 
to his former colleague, the Consul Roger Ducos, by whom it 
was terribly maltreated. Either because he found them too 
costly to maintain or out of pure love of destruction, Ducos 
pulled down a number of the buildings outright, established a 
manufactory in one wing, and covered the beautiful carvings 
and reliefs of the age of Charles VIII and Louis XII with 
thick coats of plaster. 

At the Restoration in 1814 the chateau of Amboise returned 
to the family of Orleans, of whom Louis Philippe, elected to the 
throne on the fall of the Bourbons sixteen years later, was then 
the head. Louis Philippe's government and the French mon- 
archy ended simultaneously in the Revolution of 1848, and 
just prior to that event Amboise received its last distinguished 
prisoner, the Emir Abd-el-Kader. This young Arab chief had 
been conducting a Holy War in Morocco with the object of driv- 
ing the French out of Algeria. In December, 1847, finding his 
cause hopeless, he surrendered to the Duke of Aumale, Louis 
Philippe's second son, on the understanding that he would not 
be sent anywhere but to Syria or to Egypt. The home Govern- 
ment, however, refused to keep to this agreement, and the 
Emir was taken to France and confined in the chateau of 
Amboise until the autumn of 1852, when Louis Napoleon, then 
President of the Second Republic, restored him to liberty. 
Twenty years later, by Act of the National Assembly, Amboise 
was given back to the Orleans family, and to them it has ever 
since belonged. 



199 



BLOIS 



r" 



V «•">.-> '^-f -V 




'^ 







ENTRANCE TO THE CHATEAU OF BLOIS (FACADE OF LOUIS XII) 



CHAPTER VIII 

BLOIS 

ALTHOUGH he added an imposing wing to the palace of 
Amboise, Louis XII usually preferred to hold his court 
L at Blois. This domain came to the Orleans family about 
the close of the XlVth century, when Louis, Duke of Orleans, 
brother of King Charles VI and grandfather of Louis XII, 
obtained from the crown the county of Blois in addition to his 
already extensive possessions. 

Originally the triangular-shaped plateau upon which the 
chateau stands held a Roman fortress. This was twice rebuilt, 
first about the middle of the Xth century by Thibaud the Cheat, 
ancestor of the early Counts of Blois, and again in the Xlllth 
century by one of his descendants, but, with the exception of 
the so-called ''Salle des fitats" and a part of the round Tour 
du Moulin, none of these early buildings remain. The position 
was formerly far stronger, for the steep sides of the plateau, 
washed by the waters of the Loire and of the Arroux — since 
dried up — on the south, east and north, and by those of a huge 
moat on the west, were further protected by a massive wall of 
defence. Some remains of the towers that guarded this wall 
can still be seen embedded in the neighboring buildings of 

the town. 

205 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

The first Orleans Count of Blois possessed all those traits 
which for several generations seem to have characterized the 
Dukes of Orleans. A delicate, volatile creature, with much 
personal charm. A lover of music and of poetry, a gambler 
and voluptuary, extravagant, luxurious, ambitious. 

Early in the reign of his brother, Charles VI, a rivalry broke 
out between him and his powerful uncle, Philippe le Hardi, 
Duke of Burgundy. As the King's attacks of madness became 
more frequent this jealously between the heads of the two great 
houses increased, and the Queen, Isabelle of Bavaria, utterly 
without principle herself, played them off the one against the 
other. 

Philippe le Hardi died in 1404, and for a time his successor, 
jean sans Peur, was too much taken up with affairs in Bur- 
gundy to frequent the Court ; but before long there was trouble 
brewing between the cousins. In the autumn of 1407 they 
were both in Paris, where the Court was assembled. The Queen 
had just given birth to her twelfth child, and, on the evening 
of 23d November, the Duke of Orleans went to pay his respects 
to her at the Hotel Barbette in the Marais quarter of Paris. 
At about eight o'clock he took his leave, and, mounting his 
mule, started to ride home accompanied only by eight or ten 
followers and by two or three torch-bearers, who led the way. 
The Duke was bare-headed; as he. rode along he flapped one 
glove in the air and gaily hummed a tune. The escort had 
lagged behind, when suddenly a cry was heard of "Murder!" 
followed by a fleeting glimpse of a kneeling figure in the middle 
of the street, set upon by an armed band. Then the torches 
were extinguished and all was silent save for a few groans and 
the noise of rapidly retreating footsteps. Lights were brought 
from a neighboring house and a young German esquire was 

206 



GRAND STAIRCASE OF FRANCIS I 



I 



BLOIS 

found lying mortally wounded, and near him the body of the 
Duke of Orleans.^ 

Two days later Jean sans Peur admitted that "at the insti- 
gation of the Devil" he had ordered the murder. Then he 
quitted Paris. The King, who was very fond of his brother 
and who was outraged at the boldness of the crime, issued 
letters excluding the Duke of Burgundy from the Government 
in case of a Regency, but after that nothing more was done. 
The beautiful widowed Duchess, Valentine Visconti, after 
pleading in vain for justice, was fain to retire with her grief 
and her bitter sense of injury to Blois, taking with her the 
young Duke, Charles, but sixteen years old, and his wife, 
Isabelle of France, widow of King Richard II of England. 

The murdered Duke had made some additions to the chateau, 
but for thirty years and more after his death the family was 
in no condition to be occupied with such matters. In 1408 
Valentine Visconti died, followed shortly by the Princess Isa- 
belle. Duke Charles, the Poet-Prince, then strengthened his 
party and gave it a name by marrying the daughter of 
Bernard VII of Armagnac, but in 141 5 he was taken prisoner 
at Azincourt and carried off to a twenty-five years' captivity in 
England. 

One of Henry V's death-bed injunctions was to keep the 
then childless Duke of Orleans a close prisoner, so that he 
might have no son to contest England's claim to the French 
throne. Nevertheless, in 1440 the Duke was ransomed for 
an enormous sum, and being again a widower, he sealed the 
reconciliation of his house with that of Burgundy by marrying 
Mary of Cleves, a niece of the reigning Duke, Philip the Good. 

The Poet-Prince of Orleans took but little part in public 

^See E. Lavisse, "Hist, de France," t. 4; P- i; E. Coville. 
19 209 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

affairs after his return to France. He passed his time mainly 
at Blois, writing verses and adding buildings to the chateau, 
and there in 1462 his only son, the future King Louis XII. 
was born. 

The chateau as we see it to-day covers about one-half of the 
site of the ancient citadel. The other half is laid out in a shady 
square surrounded by buildings, among which is the XVth 
century hotel of Cardinal Georges d'Amboise.^ Across the 
west end of the square extends the wing of Louis XII, abutting 
on the right on the great Xlllth century Salle des fitats, or, 
to give it its proper name, the ''Grand'Salle of the Counts of 
Blois." 

"It is much to be regretted," says M. E. Le Nail, the author 
of a very complete account of the chateau of Blois, "that the 
modern name given to this room — the 'Salle des fitats'^ 
should cause us to overlook its earlier and more characteristic 
history. The Grand'Salle of the palace of the Middle Ages 
was the place where the sovereign assembled his vassals on 
all the most solemn occasions. . . the scene of state entertain- 
ments and of important ceremonies, the witness of the entire 
public life of the great barons. A Prankish institution par 
excellence, its origins are lost in the beginnings of the very 
nation itself. . . . Besides that of Blois, the only existing 
Grand'Salles, properly so called, are those of Angers, Xlth 
century; of Sens, Xlllth century; of Poitiers, Xlllth and XVth 
centuries ; and of Narbonne, XlVth century." 

The walls of the Grand'Salle of Blois, with some of the 
woodwork, and the row of columns that divide the interior, 
all belong to the original building. 

The wing of Louis XII, built some time prior to 1502, is 
of small black and red bricks with facings and window-frames 

iSeep. 314. 
210 



BLOIS 

of light stone. It has a steep slate roof broken by carved stone 
dormer windows, between which are a row of smaller dormers 
of gilded and painted wood. The ornamentation is extremely 
rich and varied, especially in the details of the main portal, 
which is surmounted by a gothic niche with a double canopy 
above an equestrian statue of Louis XII and flanked by carved 
columns running up to the roof. Everywhere are introduced 
the initials of Louis and of Anne of Brittany, the porcupine, 
the ermine and the cordelier. There is no attempt at symmetry 
in the two sides of the fagade. The spacing, details of the 
ornamentation, even the size and shape of the windows, vary 
considerably; yet the effect of the whole is homogeneous and 
graceful in the extreme. The comparatively plain section on 
the right contained the kitchens and offices. On the west side 
of the wing facing the court is an arcade with twisted columns 
said to be copied from the one formerly seen at Plessis-les- 
Tours, built by Louis's father-in-law, Louis XL 

The plan of the chateau of Blois is an irregular quadrilateral. 
On the northwest is the Grand'Salle joined to Louis XILs 
wing on the east by a square stair-tower. On the south is the 
chapel of St. Calais, also built by Louis XII, on the site of a 
much earlier church and entered through a gallery supporting 
a small building which is all that is left of the XVth century 
additions of the murdered Duke of Orleans. On the north is 
the wing designed in the XVIIth century by Mansard for 
Gaston of Orleans, who, in order to erect it on this site, pulled 
down all the buildings of the Poet-Prince, Charles of Orleans. 
Finally, on the north extends the great wing built by Francis I, 
which occupies the site of the early feudal fortress, some of 
whose walls and towers are incorporated into it. 

Seen amidst such surroundings Mansard's wing has a hope- 
lessly chilling effect. It is in vain that the French writers call at- 

211 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

tention to the monumental stairway — "assuredly one of the 
handsomest and most complete examples of its kind in exist- 
ence," and to the dignity of the fagade with its superimposed or- 
ders; nothing can efface the general impression of dreariness 
and of shabby neglect, and it is with relief that one turns to that 
long line of building of Francis I on the north, which may 
be said to represent almost the final expression of the true 
French Renaissance. 

"This wing," says M. Le Nail, "is the most remarkable part 
of the chateau .... and is, in a sense, unique in France. On 
the north, the side overlooking the town, the three upper stories 
are arranged after the Roman order, then coming into vogue; 
but everywhere the French influence is still dominant. Before 
long, at Fontainebleau, this will wholly disappear, engulfed 
in the Italian style. At Blois, therefore, are seen the very 
last of those royal constructions upon which the beautiful 
and noble French school has set the stamp of its fer- 
tile genius." 

On the south, the line of the building is broken by a carved 
spiral staircase of wonderful richness, extending out into the 
court. The name of the architect of this staircase, justly ac- 
counted one of the most exquisite productions of the Renais- 
sance, has not been preserved, though it is known that from 
the year 15 19 the buildings were directed by one Jacques Sour- 
deau, master of works in the county of Blois. Mr. T. A. Cook 
has, however, in his fascinating book, "Spirals in Nature and 
Art," elaborated a theory that this staircase was designed by 
Leonardo da Vinci during his sojourn in the neighboring town 
of Amboise,* and that he took for his model the shell Valuta 
Vespertilio: 

"At Blois there is a staircase built .... just at a time 

1 See p. 176. 
212 



BLOIS 

when Leonardo's presence in Touraine might have enabled 
him to suggest its plan, built with its external lines corre- 
sponding to the outside of a shell, while its internal spiral re- 
produces the helix on the columella of that shell. . . If, as I 
beheve, this staircase was copied from a shell, the man who 
owned the shell and used it so must have been not merely an 
architect, .but a master of construction, for the groin-worH and 
vaulting of the stairs are not the least astounding part of the 
whole building; and he must have been a decorative artist, too, 
of the very highest order. Confining your attention for a 
moment to the inside of the staircase only, you will see ample 
evidence of this in several directions. The stairs wind up- 
wards, folding round that exquisite central shaft as the petals 
of a flower fold one within the other; and in the very lines of 
each step itself a strange and beautiful look of life and growth 
is produced by the double curve on which it is so subtly planned ; 
for these steps are not straight, as in the older staircase of the 
chateau, and most ordinary instances, but are carved into a 
sudden little wave of outline just where each one springs out 
from the supporting pillar — from the supporting stalk, as it 
were, of these delicately encircling leaves. 

"It is the irresistible, spontaneous, uplifting movement of 
the whole that remains, after all, the main impression of this 
marvellous piece of work at Blois. To walk up those steps is 
to be borne along upon a breath of beauty, and not to feel the 
clogging feet of human clay at all. Those waving lines rush 
upwards like a flame blown strongly from beneath; for there 
is in them a touch of that spell which is elemental ; of that same 
Nature's mystery which curves the tall shaft of the iris upwards 
from the pool in which it grows, or flings the wave in curving 
lines of foam upon the rocks the rising tide will cover."^ 

^ See '* Spirals in Nature and Art." Theodore Andrea Cook. John Murray, 1903. 

213 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

The Court life of Blois began with the accession in 1498 
of Louis XII. Whatever irregularities he may have committed 
in his youth, the life he led with his wife, Anne of Brittany, 
was sober and dignified and his relations with her were friendly 
and afifectionate. He treated her little foibles with good- 
humored tolerance and allowed her to have far more voice 
in public affairs than she had enjoyed with her first husband, 
Charles VIII, gentle and easy-going as he was supposed to be. 

The Queen early set her heart upon a marriage between the 
little Princess Claude of France and the Infant of Spain, son 
of the Archduke of Austria and afterwards the Emperor 
Charles V. Perhaps she had some idea in her mind of poetic 
justice, a healing of the double injury to Austria caused by 
her own marriage with Charles VIII/ Neither Louis nor his 
Ministers were much in favor of the marriage, but the Queen 
was allowed to have her way, and in 1 502 the Archduke, Philip 
the Handsome, and his wife, the Infanta, came to Blois to 
complete the negotiations. Louis's additions to the chateau 
were but just finished and everything was arranged with great 
magnificence. In order further to dazzle her guests Anne 
had her own ancestral plate brought from Nantes and all refur- 
bished and newly engraved with her arms.^ She received the 
Archduchess seated upon a throne and advanced only two steps 
to meet her. The impression was somewhat marred, however, 
by the little Princess, who set up such piercing shrieks at the 
sight of her mother-in-law to be, that she had to be hurriedly 
taken away. As years went on and there seemed to be no pros- 
pect of an heir, King Louis, yielding to the wishes of his coun- 

1 See p. 160. 

2 The arms of the ducal house of Brittany; if the marriage took place, Brittany 
would pass to Austria as the portion of the bride. 

214 



BLOIS 

sellers, and in spite of the angry remonstrances of his wife, 
broke off the match with Austria, and, in 1506, betrothed the 
Princess Claude to the young Prince of Angouleme, then heir 
presumptive to the throne. 

"Too much credit cannot be given to Louis XII," says M. Le 
Roux de Lincy in his "Life of Anne of Brittany," "for his firm- 
ness in resisting the Queen's obstinate determination to carry 
the Austrian marriage through. What would have become of 
France had Charles of Luxembourg joined Brittany to the 
enormous dominions which, as the Emperor Charles V, he later 
united under his sway?" 

In the beginning of January, 15 14, Anne of Brittany became 
violently ill at Blois, and, after a week of intense suffering she 
died. "This Queen," says Brantome, "was an honorable and 
virtuous Queen, and very good, a real mother to the poor, also 
all the French people cannot leave ofif from weeping and mourn- 
ing for her." 

The King shut himself up and would see no one ; he directed 
that extraordinary honors should be paid to the dead Queen. 
For a week the body, crowned and clad in purple velvet edged 
with ermine, was exposed upon a bed of state in the Salle 
d'Honneur in the new part of the chateau. The officers of the 
Court came each in turn accompanied by his entire house- 
hold to view the remains, and sobs and lamentations mingled 
with the sound of the Masses chanted continually night and 
day for the repose of the departed soul. 

The ceremonies were protracted for three weeks at Blois; 
then the long funeral train set out for St. Denis. In front rode 
the Princes and Princesses of the Blood, dressed in black and 
mounted on small mules, and behind them the entire Court 
riding two by two on hackneys caparisoned in black. The heir- 

215 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

presumptive, the Prince of Angouleme, wore a mourning cloak 
three ells long that trailed behind him on the ground. So fre- 
quent were the stops, however, that it was ten days more before 
the Queen was laid to rest in St. Denis. 

King Louis not only wore black himself in sign of mourning, 
but he required everyone who approached him, including the 
foreign ambassadors, to do the same; and for many weeks 
games, dancing and every public form of amusement were for- 
bidden throughout the kingdom. Even on the occasion of the 
marriage between the Prince of Angouleme and the Princess 
Claude, which was celebrated four months after the Queen's 
death, the mourning was not lightened. The bride and bride- 
groom both appeared at the ceremony habited in black cloth. 
"Une austerite estrange de deuil qu'il faiit noter," comments 
Brantome. 

In spite of all this ceremonial observance and the very real 
sorrow it represented, a sudden term was put to the period of 
mourning by the announcement that the King was about to 
take a third wife, the Princess Mary, sister of Henry VIII of 
England. The marriage took place nine months to the very 
day after the death of Anne of Brittany. The new Queen, who 
was young and full of life and gaiety, turned the sober Court 
upside down; she altered her husband's sedate habits and 
dragged him through such a succession of junketings that he 
shortly collapsed. On the last night of the year 15 14 the criers 
were running through the streets of Paris calling out : "Good 
King Louis, Father of his people, is dead!" 

There was no issue by the marriage with Mary Tudor, and 
Francis of Angouleme, great-great-grandson of Charles V, and 
son-in-law of the late King, succeeded without question. 

216 



WING OF FRANCIS I, BLOIS 



BLOIS 

Before long the Court removed to Blois and the rebuilding 
of the old feudal fortress on the right of the courtyard between 
the wing of Charles of Orleans on the west and the Grand' 
Salle on the east, was begun. It was in this wing, completed 
about fifty years later, that the two most dramatic episodes in 
the history of the chateau were to have their scene. 

The powerful House of Guise, closely connected with the 
first of these events, rose to prominence in the beginning of 
the XVIth century, when Claude, fifth son of Rene II, Duke 
of Lorraine, inherited from his father the counties of Guise 
and of Aumale, with the baronies of Joinville, Sable and May- 
enne in France, besides other lands in Normandy, Picardy, 
Flanders and Haynault. 

Claude of Lorraine was the ablest captain of his time, and, 
in reward for his military services, Francis I created him Duke 
of Guise, and he further advanced himself by marrying An- 
toinette de Bourbon, a member of the royal family. Of his 
ten children the eldest, Mary, became the Queen of James V 
of Scotland; Francis, the eldest son, succeeded as second Duke 
and married a granddaughter of Louis XII and Anne of 
Brittany. Charles, the second son, was the powerful Cardinal 
Lorraine, while the third son, Claude, who married a daughter 
of Diane of Poitiers, became Duke of Aumale. 

Claude of Lorraine died in 1550 and, on the death eight 
years later of King Henry II, his two eldest sons, Duke Francis 
and Cardinal Lorraine, became, through the influence of their 
niece, Mary Stuart, all powerful in the councils of the young 
King, Francis II. We have seen them shutting the Court up 
in the fortress of Amboise in the spring of 1560 in order to 
protect themselves from the Renaudie conspirators, and sig- 

219 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

nalizing their triumph on that occasion by wholesale execu- 
tions/ One result of these executions was the murder of the 
Duke of Guise at Orleans three years later by a Huguenot 
gentleman. The murdered Duke was succeeded by his son 
Henry as third Duke of Guise. He detested the Huguenots 
as murderers of his father, and along with his brothers, Charles, 
Duke of Mayenne, and Louis, known as Cardinal Guise, became 
chief of the League,^ and in time the scourge of King Henry HI. 

This third son of Catherine de Medicis, who succeeded his 
brother, Charles IX, in 1574, brought to the throne an exalted 
idea of the dignity of the crown. His policy was to remove 
all intermediaries between the sovereign, dispenser of favors 
and offices, and his people. Everyone who had a favor to ask, 
from the highest to the lowest, must do so in person. At the 
same time the King affected an isolation hitherto unknown. 
Familiarities permitted by his predecessors were no longer 
allowed. 

The Court during this reign became more than ever the 
centre of a tangled mesh of intrigues, plots and counter-plots, 
all interwoven with the maddest revelry, the most absolute 
license. 

One can picture the scene at Blois on any morning in the 
early years of the reign at the hour when the King was expected 
to appear. Suitors with petitions which, by the King's order, 
must be placed in his own hand, crowd about the entrance. 
In the quadrangle the armed adherents of the Duke of Alengon, 
Henry's brother, jostle those of Henry himself, for he never, 
despite all his bids for popularity, succeeded in becoming more 
than the chief of a party. The Archers of the Guard are 
bantering the followers of the King of Navarre on their mas- 

1 See p. 188. 2 See p. 48. 

220 



I 



> 



ENTRANCE THROUGH WING OF LOUIS XII, BLOIS 



BLOIS 

ter's easy-going indifference to the flirtations of his Queen, 
Margaret of Valois; while in and out among the crowd gUde 
the emissaries of the Guises, silent, watchful and alert, noting 
every word of discontent, every indication of a fresh convert 
to the principles of the League. 

Above, the windows and balconies and openings of the won- 
drous escalier a jour are filled with laughing groups of Court 
beauties— Catherine ,de Medicis' "flying squadron," the parti- 
sans of the Duke and the favorites of the King, all up to their 
pretty ears in intrigues and party politics. 

Suddenly there is an added stir and movement, an adjustment 
of farthingales, a flutter of scarfs; the Archers of the Guard 
fall into place, the courtiers draw aside in little whispering 
groups, and the curled and perfumed King appears, surrounded 
by his mignons, his handsome face not yet wearing that look 
almost of madness that his excesses were later to stamp upon 
it. The King passes stately up the winding stair between the 
curtseying bands of beauties ; the cavaliers close in from below, 
and the whole brilliant flood of life and color and movement 
sweeps up like a winding thread of gold-bejeweled ribbons and 
disappears from view. 

It is, however, a very different scene that has connected the 
name of Henry III indissolubly with the chateau of Blois. 
There on the 22d December, 1588, the Court was assembled. 
The weather was cold and penetrating, a sleety rain fell and 
the lofty rooms and stone corridors of the chateau were gray 
with damp and fog. The King, always sensitive to outward 
conditions, and a prey to imaginary terrors, was harassed and 
unstrung. His reign had been a continuous succession of dis- 
turbances ; troubles with his brother, the Duke of Alengon, trou- 
bles with the League, added to the disastrous Wars of Religion 

223 



THK CHATKAUX OK lOURAlNE 

bequeathed to liim hy liis l)r()thers, Francis II and Charles IX. 
Now, aflcr rei^minj^ foinieen years, he found himself deserted 
on all sides, a mere n.ti;-ure of a King, while the Duke of Guise 
usur])ed the real authority, and, as Henry firmly believed, only 
waited his chance to de])()se him. On this day there had been an 
interview which ])ut the final touch to the King's alarm. The 
Duke had arrogantly complained of the lack of confidence re- 
posed in him. lie said his purest motives were ever miscon- 
strued, and, therefore, he had no choice but to resign his office 
of I j'cutcnant -general. 

I Icnry was thoroughly alarmed; he was convinced that this 
meant that the Duke was about to get himself api)ointed Con- 
stable, and then and there he determined to try to rid himself 
of the man who had been the pest of his life. The Guises had 
plenty of enemies, and among them the King selected as his 
accomplices a band known as the "Forty-five," all bitterly hos- 
tile to the Feague. 

The royal apartments at l)lois consist of two suites, those 
of the King, extending along the north side of the second floor 
of iMancis I's wing, and the Queen's, situated directly beneath 
them. In the bedroom of the lower suite lay Catherine de 
JMedicis ill, weak and nervous, a mere shadow of her former 
indomitable self. Tier son did not take her into his confidence. 

It was given out that on the following day, Friday, the 23d, 
the King would go to the neighboring estate of La Noue and 
that the Council would, therefore, be held early in the morning. 
lU'fore seven o'clock, the hour apj^ointed, the Forty-five had 
been stationed, some in the King's bed-chamber under one 
of their number named Lorgnac, and others in a small passage 
leading from it to what was known as the "old cabinet." The 
King, with three of his immediate followers, d'Ornano and 

224 



BLOIS 

the two d'Entragues, placed himself in the "new cabinet" com- 
municating with the l)edroom by a door at the farther end. 
Jle was so nervous that he could not keej) still and kept send- 
ing message after message to his chaplain and his almoner 
in the adjacent oratory, to pray for the success of "a measure 
by which peace was to be restored to France." 

At seven o'clock the Council opened. Shortly afterwards 
the Duke of Ciuise was seen to issue from his apartments in 
the wing of Louis XII and cross the court-yard. Througliout 
the palace there liad been a vague feeling of uneasiness. It 
was suspected that something against tlie Ciuises was about 
to be attempted and messages had reached the Duke both from 
the Papal Nuncio and from his mother, the Duchess of 
Nemours, the one advising, the other entreating him to cjuit 
the Court. Even the Queen-mother would have tried to save 
him had she dared. 

Guise, however, was a man of indomitable courage, and he 
harl an inextinguishable faitli in liis lucky star, 'i'o a gentle- 
man named I>a vSale, whfj attempted to warn him, he re]>lied 
that for years such dangers as those suggested Jiad had no 
terrors for him, while another friendly counsellor was merely 
told that he was a fool for his pains. 

On reaching the foot of the escalier a jour the Duke was 
surprised to find a number of the Scottish archers assembled. 
Their captain explained that the poor fellows had come to jjeti- 
tion for arrears of i>ay due them and ])(i'^'^i'A for llu: Duke's 
good offices with the CJouncil. lie ]>romised and passed on, 
when the Archers, swarming u]) Ijehind him, completely blocked 
the way. 

At the top, the stair opens on the great Salle des Gardes, 
the upper end of which was used for the meetings of the Coun- 

225 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

cil. From thence a door leads directly into the King's bed- 
chamber, while another door close to the fireplace communicates 
with the *'old cabinet." 

The other members of the Council, many of whom were in 
the secret, were already assembled when the Duke of Guise 
entered, followed shortly by his brother, the Cardinal. The 
Duke crossed the room, and, without removing his cloak, stood 
with his back to the fire, warming himself and eating Bagna- 
rolle plums out of a comfit-box. Presently word was brought 
that the King wished to speak to him in the old cabinet. Find- 
ing the door of communication fastened. Guise passed into the 
King's bed-chamber, saluted the members of the Forty-five 
whom he found there, and turned into a narrow passage on 
the left that leads to the old cabinet. After proceeding a few 
steps he noticed that he was followed; he paused, hesitated, 
and then turned. Instantly the assassins were upon him, and 
in a moment he had been stabbed in a dozen places. Embar- 
rassed by the folds of his long cloak and unable to draw his 
sword, he nevertheless fought furiously and even succeeded 
in dragging his assailants back into the bed-chamber, where 
he flung them off. Turning with clenched fists and arms ex- 
tended, wide-open mouth and staring eyes, he staggered across 
the room only to receive the final thrust from Lorgnac, who, 
with drawn sword, stood awaiting him. The Duke beat the 
air twice with his outstretched arms, then fell heavily to the 
floor at the very foot of the King's bedstead. 

There was a moment of absolute silence; then the door at 
the farther end of the room was softly pushed open, the hang- 
ings were drawn aside and the crazy face of the King, well- 
nigh as pallid as that of the murdered man himself, was thrust 
in. For an instant he only stared about him. "Are you sure 
he is dead?" he whispered. "Sure, Sire," was the reply. Then 

226 



COURT OF THE CHATEAU OF BLOIS 



BLOIS 

only Henry dared to glide in and to stand gazing down at his 
enemy. 

"Mon Dieu!" he exclaimed, *'How big he is!" and he stirred 
the body with his foot. 

Meantime a tumult had broken out in the Council chamber. 
At the first sound of the scuffle, Cardinal Guise and the Arch- 
bishop of Lyons had been seized and hurried off to the strong 
room at the top of the Tour du Moulin. The Duchess of 
Nemours, the Prince of Joinville, eldest son of the Duke,^ the 
old Cardinal Bourbon and a number of others were likewise 
placed under arrest. A band of soldiers appeared suddenly 
in the midst of the Tiers Etat, then in session in the Hotel 
de Ville in the town, and arrested some half-dozen of the mem- 
bers. Without being given time so much as to don their hats 
and cloaks they were marched off through the pelting rain to 
the chateau, where, as they filed past the open door of the 
King's chamber, they could see the two long tracks of blood 
stretching from the bed to the passageway. 

After the murder Henry went straight to his mother. 

"Good morning, Madame," said he jauntily. 'T hope you 
will forgive me, but Monsieur de Guise is dead. There will 
not be any more question of him. I am master at last !" 

Catherine gazed at him in terror, then cowered down in her 
bed, weeping and shaking from sheer fright. Later in the 
day she dragged herself up and went to visit Cardinal Bourbon 
in the prison where he was confined. He received her with 
bitter reproaches and declared that these misfortunes were all 
the result of her policy. After returning from this interview 
Catherine fell into a high fever; she never left her bed again 
and in less than a fortnight she was dead. 

On the morning after the murder a Captain of the Guard 

1 See p. 35. 
229 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

came to Cardinal Guise and informed him that he had been 
sent to conduct him to the King. The Cardinal followed him, 
but had advanced only a few steps when several soldiers set 
upon him in the narrow passage leading around the Tour du 
Moulin, and stabbed him to death. The bodies of the two 
brothers were burned the same night and the ashes thrown 
into the Loire for fear their followers might convert them 
into relics. 

The crime was wholly without the results so confidently 
expected by the King, and, as far as he was concerned, it had 
far better never have been committed. The mantle of the 
murdered Duke fell upon his brother, the Duke of Mayenne, 
and the Leaguers, now frankly revolutionary, rallied to his 
standard. Henry, deserted by the entire Catholic party, entered 
into an alliance with his brother-in-law, the King of Navarre, 
and six months after the murders at Blois he was himself 
struck down by a young monk, who, after consultation with 
"a good doctor of the Church," was persuaded that to kill a 
tyrant was not a crime. 

Blois, like Amboise, had now the stain of blood upon its 
walls. Thenceforth the Court only visited the chateau rarely 
and for brief periods, and though another Medician Queen 
did occupy the rooms in which Catherine de Medicis had passed 
the last weeks of her life, it was under circumstances that were 
hardly more cheerful. 

Henry of Navarre, though a very distant relation, was the 
next heir to the throne and had been acknowledged by Henry HI 
on his death-bed as his successor. He had managed in spite 
of the Leaguers to secure the crown. He had divorced his 
wife, Margaret of Valois, and had married Marie de Medicis, 
and then in May, 1610, just when France was beginning to 
recover from the misrule of the last Valois Kings and the 

230 



BLOIS 

drawn-out disasters of the Religious Wars, he had been assas- 
sinated in the streets of Paris. 

The widowed Queen became Regent, and guardian of her 
son, Louis XIII, then nine years old, but she made herself 
utterly detested, ruling France for seven years through 
a worthless Florentine favorite, Concino Concini, whom she 
created Marquis d'Ancre. Meanwhile the little King went 
bird-shooting with his friend Charles d' Albert of Luynes,^ and 
the two talked and dreamed of the great projects they would 
undertake together when Louis was really King. Seven years 
after the death of Henry IV Luynes thought the time had 
come to realize these dreams. He determined to get rid of 
the hated favorite and he had no difficulty in finding confed- 
erates. On the morning of 14th April, 161 7, Concini was shot 
dead as he entered the court of the Louvre. The King with 
Luynes watched from an upper window, ready to fly should 
the attempt miscarry, but of the fifty gentlemen who composed 
the Marshal's suite only one raised a hand in his defence. The 
King appeared at the window and was received with cries of 
''Vive le roi" from the crowd. The Queen Regent heard the 
shouts from her own apartment and understood that her day was 
over. A fortnight later she was removed from Paris to Blois, 
followed by the execrations of the populace. 

"I have reigned for seven years," she sighed resignedly, 
"now I have nothing to hope for but a heavenly crown." 

Nevertheless, she did hope for much else; and, finding her 
situation at Blois nothing short of imprisonment, she was soon 
plotting with the Duke of fipernon^ to efifect her escape and 
to set up a rival party to that of Luynes. 

Owing to the situation of the chateau and the careful meas- 

1 See p. 247. 

2 In his youth Epernon had been one of Henry Ill's mignons. He was the 
most powerful lord to hold out against Luynes's government. 

21 231 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

ures taken by Luynes, escape promised to be extremely 
difficult. Nevertheless, Rucellai, Abbe of Ligny, an adherent 
of the Queen-mother, and, like herself, a Florentine, undertook 
the task of organizing a rescue. 

The plans took months to mature and nearly miscarried, 
but at last the scheme was arranged. The night of 2ist Febru- 
ary was fixed on for the attempt, and the details were arranged 
by a clever Gascon named Cardillac. The Queen occupied 
the royal suite of apartments on the first floor of the wing of 
Francis I — the bedroom in which Catherine de Medicis had 
died, the oratory, and beyond that the wainscotted cabinet de 
travail, with the interlaced C. and H. for Catherine and Henry, 
and its secret cupboards in the panelling. As guards were 
stationed by Luynes' orders in all the corridors and stairways 
of the building as well as at every door of egress, Cardillac 
decided that the only way for the Queen to get away unseen 
was by one of the windows on the north of the chateau over- 
looking the town. At that time a terrace extended on this 
side nearly half-way up to the first floor, so that the drop was 
not so great as it is to-day; nevertheless, for a stout, middle- 
aged lady of sedentary habits, the undertaking was no trifling 
one. The Queen looked at the airy ladders of rope provided 
by her equerry, the Count de Brenne, and then at the sheer 
wall of the chateau stretching below her, and shook her head. 
She said she was a woman and a Queen, and such a method 
of escape would not be dignified; but since there was mani- 
festly no other way she had finally to yield. On the evening 
of the 2 1 St all was in readiness. The Archbishop of Toulouse, 
a son of fipernon, with a troop of horsemen was to meet the 
Queen at Montrichard, a castle half-way on the road to Loches, 
where she would spend the rest of the night and in the morn- 

232 



CHATEAU OF BLOIS, WING OF FRANCIS I, 

SHOWING WINDOW FROM WHICH MARIE DE MEDIGIS ESCAPED, THE TOUR DU MOULIN AND 
END OF WING OF GASTON OF ORLEANS 



BLOIS 

ing continue her journey under the escort of the Duke of 
;fipernon, who was Governor there. A carriage and pair and 
some saddle horses were stationed at the further side of the 
bridge over the Loire, and fresh horses were waiting at every 
post. Cardillac, who had left Loches at eight in the evening 
with the final instructions, reached Blois at about i a. m. He 
found Brenne's ladders already in place, one reaching from 
the ground to the terrace, the other from the terrace to the 
window of the cabinet de travail, where a light was burning. 
Running lightly up he looked in. The Queen was standing, 
the picture of irresolution, while two members of her guard 
whom they had been obliged to confide in, were imploring her 
to think again before taking so dangerous and decisive a step. 
A maid, with tears pouring down her cheeks, was hurriedly 
packing her mistress's jewels. Cardillac tapped lightly, sprang 
in, and announced cheerfully that all was as well as well could 
be; he had just left three hundred armed cavaliers at Loches, 
who were ready to follow the Queen to the ends of the earth. 
Without a word, Marie walked to the window, and, folding her 
skirts about her, bade Brenne lead the way, while an attendant 
aided her as well as he could from above. Between them they 
got her to the first stage in safety, but here fresh difficulties 
arose, for notwithstanding all their care the Queen found the 
descent so terrifying that she utterly refused to set foot on 
the second ladder. Here was a situation! To be landed on 
the top of a steep embankment at 2 a. m. on a freezing Feb- 
ruary morning with a stout lady who declined either to advance 
or retreat and whose royalty forbade coercion! While the 
others held a hurried council of war the clever Gascon looked 
about him. He observed a gully hollowed out by the rain in 
the side of the terrace which reached to the street below. A 

235 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

heavy cloak was spread on the ground, the Queen was per- 
suaded to seat herself upon it, and while one grasped it firmly 
from above another dragged it from below and the Queen was 
safely tobogganed to the bottom. Finding herself on solid 
ground at last, Marie's spirits rose, and she was much amused 
when two officers of the household allowed them to pass without 
scrutiny, merely calling out some coarse pleasantry. Travers- 
ing the Faubourg du Foix, the party crossed the bridge without 
accident, but there another crisis awaited them. The carriage 
and horses seen by Cardillac on the spot not an hour before 
had gone. Again were the leaders of the adventure thrown 
into miseries of anxiety. They gathered in a troubled little 
group and were discussing the best means of meeting this new 
problem when a groom came running up to say that the carriage 
was awaiting them in a side-street. With a general exclama- 
tion of relief, the party hurried after him. The Queen got 
inside, the various boxes and packages were stowed away, 
the escort jumped on their horses, and the party took the road 
for Montrichard at a gallop. Suddenly the Queen uttered an 
exclamation ; "Stop," she cried, "stop at once !" 

The carriage halted, and the escort rode up to learn what 
had happened. 

"One of my packages is missing. We must turn back," said 
the Queen. "I cannot go on without it." 

Everyone implored her not to think of doing anything so dan- 
gerous, they pointed out how much time had already been lost, 
and that a moment's delay would now probably mean failure. 
But the Queen was obdurate — go on without her package she 
would not. Accordingly, two of the grooms were sent back 
to look while the rest waited in the road. Sure enough, the 
package was found lying in the street where the party had 

236 



CHATEAU OF BLOIS, VIEWED FROM A STREET OF THE TOWN. 
WING OF FRANCIS I ON THE LEFT 



BLOIS 

mounted, and brought to the Queen. She was, as it turned out, 
justified in persisting in this case, for the missing bundle con- 
tained jewels to the value of a hundred thousand crowns, which 
were, in fact, all that the conspirators had to depend upon to 
pay the expenses of the coming struggle. 

At daybreak Rucellai and a party of gentlemen met them 
on the road. The Archbishop of Toulouse received them at 
Montrichard, and before the day was out Marie was safely 
lodged in the chateau of Loches. 

At Blois consternation and amazement reigned. The doors 
leading to the royal suite had to be broken in. No clue was to 
be found, for Cardillac, the last to descend, had dragged the 
ladders down after him, and thrown them in the Loire. No 
one could imagine how the Queen and the five persons known 
to have entered her apartment the evening before had got 
out. It was long before the mystery was cleared up. 

A civil war was the result of the flight from Blois, which 
only ended when Richelieu efifected a reconciliation between 
the King and his mother, in August, 1620. 

The subsequent career of Marie de Medicis was tragic. 
Some years later, for attempting to undermine the influence 
of Richelieu, she was imprisoned at Compiegnes, whence she 
escaped in 1631 and fled to the Low Countries. Her last years 
were spent as an exile in utter destitution, and this grand- 
mother of Louis XIV is said to ha-ve died in 1642 in a hayloft 
at Cologne. 

In 1625 Blois was given in appanage to the King's brother 
Gaston, Duke of Orleans, an incorrigible schemer, who was 
constantly intriguing against Richelieu, and constantly in dis- 
grace with the King. During one of his long periods of semi- 
exile he amused himself by pulling down the western wing 

239 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

of the chateau and replacing it by a building designed by 
Mansard. 

This work of the Duke of Orleans closes the building period 
at Blois ; that of neglect and destruction began in the following 
century. 

In 1845 the Town Council determined to save their beautiful 
chateau from total ruin and began a thorough restoration only 
completed in 1870. The work has been for the most part very 
happily carried out, especially in the wing of Louis XII, where 
almost all the carving, including the equestrian statue of the 
King above the entrance, while wholly modern, is in the spirit 
of the XVth century. 

It being impossible to recover the rich tapestries with which 
in its royal days the stone walls of the chateau were hung, the 
architect conceived that the original effect might be obtained 
by painting the walls in set patterns with deep blues, reds, 
greens, and gold. The result is not fortunate. 

On the south and east the town crowds closely about the 
base of the chateau. It is a busy, cheerful place with hilly 
streets leading down to the river and many soft old Renais- 
sance houses and hotels tucked away in shadowy corners. 
There are some old churches, too, the Cathedral of St. Louis 
dominating the town from a height above the Loire, and the 
Xllth century abbey-church of St. Nicolas close to the chateau. 
The Church of St. Sauveur, however, where the Maid went 
to have her banner blessed before riding off to the relief of 
Orleans, has gone, and a tablet on the Place du Chateau is all 
there is to indicate the site. 

From the Place Victor Hugo on the north one has a fine 
view of the outer, side of the wing of Francis I towering over- 
head ; a splendid mass of lights and shadows with its two lines 

240 



CHATEAU OF BLOIS: WING OF LOUIS XII, EXTERIOR FA9ADE 



LUYNES 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

was made eventually Chancellor of the kingdom, though quite 
unfitted for the office either by training or natural parts. 

'The Queen-mother, Princes and nobles of that kingdom," 
says Lord Herbert of Cherbury, ''repined that his advices to 
the King should be so prevalent, which also at least caused a 
civil war in that kingdom. How unfit this man was for the 
credit he had with the King may be argued from this: that 
when there was question made about some business in Bohemia, 
he demanded whether it was an inland country or lay upon 
the sea." 

Once firmly established in power, Luynes's great ambition 
was to found a House. Having himself married a daughter 
of the Duke of Montbazon, he obtained the hands of wealthy 
heiresses for both his brothers, and placed all the members of 
his family in good positions. "Poor cousins poured out of 
Avignon by the ship-load and shared in his favors." In 1619 
the King presented him with the estate of Maille on the Loire, 
bought from a family of that name who had held it from 
father to son for thirteen generations. Louis erected it into 
a duche-pairie and the name was changed to Luynes, the 
favorite bearing thereafter the title of Duke of Luynes 

The chateau of Maille or Luynes, one of the most impres- 
sive feudal castles in Touraine, stands about seven miles below 
Tours on a steep ridge commanding the high-road that skirts 
the right bank of the Loire. Like so many other chateaux it 
had its origin in a Roman fort, the site being occupied later 
by an Xlth century keep, torn down in the XVth century to 
make room for the present building. The little town hugs 
the bottom of the hill and partly climbs it; many of the still 
occupied houses both here and along the road from Tours are 
ancient cave-dwellings hewn out of the rock at some remote 

248 



CHATEAU OF LUYNES 

SHOWING PART OF THE FEUDAI, BUILDING OF THE XVth CENTURY 



- i^, i^ .v ;' ,';v:gMC ' 



|j^ {' f \ - ' 



J 



LUYNES 

period, and now fitted with doors and windows to meet the 
requirements of a more luxurious age. The chimneys are run 
up through the rock to the level above and stick out from 
among the bushes and grass at every possible angle and with 
the oddest effect. In some places where there is an upper 
story reached by ladder from without, and especially where 
the rocky soil shows streaks of bright red and yellow, they 
look like the colored pictures of the cave-dwellings of Arizona. 

Luynes is a clean, pretty little town, gay too when decked 
for a fete.^ Then the housewives hang out their linen sheets 
lengthwise before the doors and windows, thus forming a con- 
tinuous drapery along both sides of the street; on these they 
pin roses and bunches of flowers, and down the center of the 
roadway they strew a path of rushes and asparagus stalks and 
rose-leaves. As the wind gently flaps the sheets to and fro 
and the sun shines upon their glistening whiteness, it looks as 
though the whole town had been wainscoted in Dresden china. 

The main street winds and climbs and ends in front of the 
Church of Ste. Genevieve, a commonplace structure put up to 
replace an ancient church torn down in 1871 Close to it is 
a XVth century house with quaint wood-carvings of St. James 
with his pilgrim's staff and scrip and scallop shell, the Virgin 
with the dead Christ, St. Christopher, and Ste. Genevieve, who 
is represented carrying a taper, which, as fast as the Devil 
(seen above her shoulder) blows it out, she relights with her 
finger. It commemorates an adventure the Saint is said to 
have met with one stormy night when conducting her virgins 
to prayers. 

The castle, which looms high overhead, is reached by stone 
steps leading up from behind the dusky market-place with its 

^ The fete de Dieu in June. 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

steep over-hanging slate roof and archaic-looking wooden pil- 
lars. On either side lie gay little gardens and vineyards and 
orchards terraced out of the hillside, once, no doubt, as bare 
and forbidding as the grim cliff of castle v^all above. At the 
top a deep ravine is crossed by a stone bridge replacing the 
ancient drawbridge, and within there is a square court bounded 
by the buildings of the old chateau on two sides, by a XVIIth 
century wing on the west, and on the side overlooking the town 
and the Loire valley by a paved terrace planted with a thick 
row of trees. 

Though the first Duke of Luynes only lived to enjoy his 
honors for two years (he died of fever at Monheur, December, 
1 62 1, while conducting a campaign against the Protestants), 
his ambition to found a House that should endure was realized, 
for the chateau of Luynes along with the title is still held by 
his descendants. 

The only part of the chateau shown to visitors is the chemin- 
de-ronde, protected by the battlements and reached by a stair 
in the old part. From thence can be seen on a neighboring 
hilltop the manor of St. Venant, on the site of a convent of 
that name formerly supplied with water by an aqueduct whose 
ruins are still standing a mile or so off to the northeast. This 
aqueduct, long supposed to be of Roman origin, is now believed 
by archaeologists to be "not earlier than the Illd century, and 
probably some three centuries later." The chapel of St. Ve- 
nant has been turned into a storehouse, and such, too, is the 
fate of the chapel of the Canonesses of St. Sepulchre, standing 
close to the chateau across the second moat. The windows 
have been clumsily walled up and the fine carvings of the 
portal mutilated, yet enough remains to show that this must 
once have been a quite beautiful church, before the Revolution 

2c;2 




CHATEAU OF LUYNES 



n 



LUYNES 

followed by a century of neglect had reduced it to its present 
condition. The revolutionnaire who was responsible for most 
of the mischief blew his brains out at the age of eighty-one, 
not, however, from contrition, but because "he had the rheu- 
matism and could not stand it." 

The Hospital in the town was founded in 1690 by Louis 
Charles d' Albert, third Duke of Luynes. In the chapel is seen 
the founder's tomb, placed there because, as the epitaph states, 
"although he lived in this world with all the eclat to which 
his birth and rank entitled him, he desired after death to lie 
among the poor whom he so tenderly loved." Beside him lies 
his second wife, the haute et puissante Anne de Rohan, the 
circumstances of whose marriage were unusual. The Duke 
had lost his first wife very early, and in his affliction he took 
to spending so much of his time with the religious community 
of Port-Royal des Champs that his family became alarmed 
lest he should enter the brotherhood altogether. With much 
difficulty he was induced to return to the world, when the first 
thing he did was to fall madly in love with his own aunt, Anne 
de Rohan, herself destined for the Church, and who had al- 
ready taken the white veil. Nevertheless, the Duke's mother, 
the Duchess de Chevreuse, overcame her sister's scruples, and, 
having influence at Rome as well as a great deal of money, 
she got a dispensation. The marriage took place and turned 
out very happily. When Anne de Rohan died, leaving seven 
children, the Duke promptly married again, so completely was 
he cured of his leanings towards the cloister. 

In Luynes we see almost our last of the feudal chateau. At 
Chaumont, it is true, we shall find the main features still pre- 
served, but without the grim, uncompromising look, the spaces 
of blank wall pierced only by occasional loop-holes, and the 

255 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

fortress-like aspect of the whole. These things were to dis- 
appear forever, together with the necessities that gave them 
birth, and in their place arose the radiant dwellings of the 
Renaissance. No longer occupying barren hilltops, but placed 
on the banks of the streams, these henceforth merely played 
at defence, the moats serving as ornamental water-ways, and 
the towers as a graceful architectural device for breaking up 
the surface of a fagade. At the chateau of Chenonceaux we 
shall find the very embodiment of this change. 



2=;6 



CHENONCEAUX 



« 



CHATEAU OF CHENONCEAUX: PRINCIPAL ENTRANCE 



CHAPTER X 



CHENONCEAUX 



THE village of Chenonceaux lies about twenty miles east 
of Tours in the valley of the Cher and on the edge of 
the forest of Amboise. A footpath leads across the 
fields from the railroad station to the park gates, and from 
thence the chateau is approached by a stately avenue. 

On either hand one now and again catches glimpses of long, 
shady alley-ways, pierced only occasionally by a flickering ray 
of sunshine, and terminating in clearings that seem to lie in 
a sort of emerald twilight. The avenue ends at a second gate 
guarded bv two granite sphinxes, and facing this rises the 
chateau. 

Chenonceaux is an almost perfect example of the French 
Renaissance before the Italian influence had come to cool 
down its exuberance.^ It seems like something that has burst 
into spontaneous and joyous existence. You can picture the 
chatelaine and the architect^ and the master-builder, exulting 
together in the pride of their work as it unfolded itself day 

^ "The Renaissance in France, and es- . . . sur I'Histoire de Chenonceaux. M. 
pecially In Touraine, antedates the ar- I' Abbe Ch. Chevalier, 
rival of the Italian artists by a good ^ He was Pierre Nepveu, called Trin- 
many years. Rosso and Primaticcio only queau, and was the architect of Cham- 
came to France in 1530-31." Rapport bord and of a part of Blois as well. 

261 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

by day more radiant, even, than they had seen it in their dreams. 
Here is nothing to suggest feudaHty or strength. It is a place 
built for pleasure alone, with no thought of wars and tumults, 
of surprises and assaults, of sieges and sorties. 

In the XVth century Chenonceaux belonged to a family of 
Auvergne named Marques. They sided with the Burgundians 
in the English wars, and the seigneur, Jean Marques, placed 
an English garrison in his castle. After a victory won in the 
plain of Saintes-Georges by the French Marshal, Laval de 
Bois-Dauphin, the garrison was reduced, the fortifications of 
Chenonceaux were laid level with the ground, and its seigneur, 
condemned as a traitor and a rebel, was thrown into prison, 
where he died. His son, taking the lesson to heart, did homage 
to King Charles VII in 143 1, and was allowed to re- fortify 
his chateau. His son, Pierre Marques, inherited the estate 
and built a mill close by on a pier in the middle of the river 
Cher; but he got into difficulties and one of his creditors, 
Thomas Bohier, belonging to that family of brilliant if un- 
scrupulous financiers whose administration under Francis I 
ended so disastrously,^ foreclosed. Pierre Marques, utterly 
ruined, had at last to resign the ancestral home of his race, 
and, in 1496, Thomas Bohier took possession. 

The new proprietor had been general des finances in Nor- 
mandy under Louis XI, and had made a large fortune. Some 
years after acquiring Chenonceaux he pulled down all the 
buildings except the donjon, and he or his wife or their archi- 
tect conceived the bold design of converting the mill of the 
Marques into a dwelling-house. Before the work had advanced 
far Thomas Bohier was sent b}^ Louis XII on a mission to 
Italy, and his wife, Katherine Brigonnet, went on with the 

^ See p. 300. 
262 



CHENONCEAUX 

building. It is to her, indeed, that the historian of the chateau, 
M. I'Abbe ChevaHer, gives most of the credit for this master- 
piece of architecture. "It is she, Katherine Brigonnet," he 
says, "who introduced into the buildings of Chenonceaux that 
fairy-like grace, that unique charm and originality of design 
that captivate the beholder from the moment that his eye rests 
upon them." She was a niece on her mother's side of Jacques 
de Beaune-Semblengay, later Superintendent of Finances under 
Francis I, and her father was Guillaume Brigonnet, Charles 
Vlllth's Minister and Superintendent of Finances, who was 
created Cardinal of St. Malo. It is related that an astrologer 
announced one day in the presence of his wife that Brigonnet 
was to be made a Cardinal. The lady, though far from pleased, 
took the prediction seriously, and since it could mean but one 
thing, made her preparations. Sure enough, before long she 
died, her husband, accepting his destiny, entered the Church, 
was made a Bishop and eventually received a Cardinal's hat 
from Pope Alexander VI. 

Thomas Bohier died in Italy in 1523, soon after the disgrace 
and imprisonment of his wife's uncle and his own chief, Jacques 
de Beaune-Semblengay. His affairs were deeply involved and 
it was asserted that his accounts were short by the amount of 
90,000 livres turnois, or about 2,000,000 francs. His son and 
heir, Antoine Bohier, was obliged to resign Chenonceaux to 
satisfy his father's debt, and the Constable, Anne de Mont- 
morency, took possession in the name of the King, Francis I. 

The Bohiers had not been able to finish their chateau, per- 
haps they hardly hoped to do so, for on the oak door of the 
donjon of the Marques they carved the not very confident 
motto: S'il vient a point m'en souviendra (if all turns out well, 
I will remember it). Yet, seen from the front, all is their work^ 

263 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

and even the donjon they transformed, throwing out a pointed 
totirelle on the one side and a tall chimney on the other, and 
breaking its severe surface with carved Renaissance windows. 

Separating the donjon from the rest of the chateau, runs 
the branch of the Cher that forms the moat. Its steep banks 
faced with stone are half hidden by masses of brilliant flowers, 
bunches of trumpet-blossoms, long spears of Canterbury-bells, 
the reddish bloom of the lilas terresfre, white marsh lilies, and 
many others, all, with their vivid foliage, clinging to the mossy 
stones and dipping down to the water's edge, or else flinging 
themselves up to the very summit of the embankment in a 
■^vild exuberance of life and strength. 

A stone bridge cut in the centre by a drawbridge leads across 
the moat to a square terrace, and from the bridge you have 
your first view of the Cher. It ripples suddenly into view, 
almost at your feet, wide, clear, and sparkling, flowing swiftly 
through its winding channel, gurgling about the great stone 
piers, lapping the green banks, and reflecting every stone and 
pinnacle of the pile in its cool bosom. 

The square main part of the building rests upon two huge 
piers of masonry in which are the kitchens and ofiices. Above 
these rise two stories and a steep roof broken by highly orna- 
mented dormer windows, peaked tourelles and tall chimneys. 
In this roof Catherine de ]\Iedicis is said to have lodged her 
cscadron volanf- when, long after the Bohiers' day, she feted 
her three sons, one after another, at Chenonceaux. 

At each angle rises a round tower, and beyond the tower on 
the left, as you face the entrance, a lofty chapel is thrown out 
resting upon a single pier of its own. The main door, now 
surmounted by a carved stone balcony as in the original design. 
is of that shade of faded green that only time and a certain 

1 See p. 277. 
264 



CHATEAU OF CHENONCEAUX SHOWING CHAPEL AND DONJON 



CHENONCEAUX 

amount of exposure seem able to produce. The woodwork is 
painted and gilded, and harmonizes agreeably with the creamy 
hue of the masonry. Where the stonework gives a painful im- 
pression of lately having been scraped, it is in reality the marks 
of the operations which the present proprietor is conducting 
with every possible care, and with the object of restoring the 
fagade to its original state. 

From the door a spacious hall extends through to the long 
gallery across the Cher, which, although added after the Bo- 
hiers' time was included in their plan. Opening from the hall on 
the left is the Guard room, and beyond it the chapel, small but 
lofty, and containing some fine old stained glass and a carved 
XVIth century tribune. Other rooms are shown, the bed- 
chamber of Francis I, with a handsome chimney-piece, and 
those of Diane of Poitiers and of Louis XIII. The most inter- 
esting of all, perhaps, is the small apartment called the cabinet 
vert, used by Catherine de Medicis as a boudoir and where 
she used to write her letters and dispatches. Of all the rooms 
this seems to have preserved most the old-world flavor. The 
ceiling, carved with her initial, has remained untouched since 
her day, and one can fancy the Queen, at some knotty point 
in her correspondence, throwing herself back and interrogating 
those identical carved and painted K's in search of inspiration 
to guide her in her crooked policy. 

In the library are seen a number of original documents, 
among which it is interesting, in this place, to note one bearing 
the signature of Catherine's life-long rival, Diane of Poitiers, 
Duchess of Valentinois. 

Diane was the daughter of Jean de Poitiers, Sieur de Saint- 
Vallier.^ She was born in 1499 and at the age of fifteen married 
Louis de Breze, Seneschal of Normandy, then fifty-five. They 

1 See p. 80. 
267 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

had two daughters, married by their clever mother the one to 
Robert IV de la Mark, Duke of Bouillon, and the other to 
Claude de Lorraine, Duke of Aumale, a brother of the Duke 
of Guise. 

In 1 53 1 the Seneschal died, and four years later his widow 
became maitresse en titre of the Dauphin, later Henry II, then 
only eighteen years old. Her influence over this young Prince 
was absolute, and when he ascended the throne in 1547 one of 
his first acts was to strip Madame d'l&stampes, his late father's 
favorite, of her estates of Beune and Limours in order to give 
them to Diane, whom at the same time he created Duchess of 
Valentinois. This, however, was not enough. Diane had long 
coveted Chenonceaux, and her royal lover, alleging as his reason 
the "great and very commendable services rendered to the 
crown by her late husband, Louis de Breze," now presented 
her with that estate, of which a deed of gift was drawn up 
in due form. Still the widow was not satisfied. Reflecting 
upon the ease with which Madame d'Estampes had been de- 
spoiled in her own favor, she declared she would never feel safe 
until Chenonceaux was absolutely secured to her and there 
could be no question of the "alienation of crown property." A 
complicated law-suit was therefore begun. First of all, Antoine 
Bohier was charged with having rated the property at just 
double its actual value when he ceded it to the crown to satisfy 
the shortage in his father's accounts. He protested that it had 
been appraised by a royal commission and that the late King, 
Francis I, had approved of the transaction. No attention was 
paid to the protest and Bohier, suspecting a plot to ruin him, 
threw up his ofiice of general des finances and fled to Italy. 
After this matters proceeded merrily. The process of 1525 
was annulled and Antoine Bohier, once more and in spite of 

268 
















!:i^ 



,;/.■ 






/ 










jr_V" ("^'"^ ' 



\^,.,- 



•j" V 



CHATEAU OF CHENONCEAUX, LOOKING UP-STREAM FROM THE 
RIGHT BANK OF THE CHER 



CHENONCEAUX 

himself proprietor of Chenonceaux, was again ordered to make 
good his late father's deficit. As he could not do this it was 
announced that the property would be confiscated, but just at 
this point Diane, who hitherto had not appeared in the transac- 
tion, came forward and offered to buy it for 50,000 livres 
turnois. Bohier, who was brought back from Italy and for- 
given the remaining 40,000 livres of debt, signed everything 
required of him, and Diane congratulated herself upon having 
a clear title at last. 

The widow, at this time hard on to fifty, was still accounted 
the most beautiful woman of her day. Brantome, describing 
her nearly twenty years later, says that even then she was as 
fresh and vigorous as a well-preserved woman of thirty, and 
so lovely that he could not conceive of a heart so stony as not 
to be moved merely by the sight of her. She was strong and 
active, with brilliant complexion, somewhat irregular features 
and a tip-tilted nose. Apart from her beauty she attracted by 
her splendid physical health and by her unalterable good-humor. 
Yet, underneath this pleasing exterior, the favorite hid a hard, 
narrow, avaricious nature in which equanimity passed for kind- 
liness and bigotry for piety. Her fanaticism in matters of re- 
ligion joined readily with that of Montmorency and the Guises, 
and among them they completely dominated the King. 

Apart from intrigue, Diane's chief interest lay in gardening, 
and at Chenonceaux she gave this taste full scope. One may 
fancy her, a trim, graceful figure in garden hat and gloves, 
moving about among her shrubs and flower-beds and directing 
the workmen as they laid out the great parterre in the new 
fashion lately introduced from Italy by Passelo de Mercoghano. 
She employed Philibert De I'Orme to throw the bridge across 
the Cher which the Bohiers had never been able to build, and 
'' 271 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

r 

was in full tide of possession, with plans for further additions 
on foot, when the King's sudden death put an end to all. The 
Queen, whom she had supplanted and humiliated for nearly 
a quarter of a century, was to have her day at last. 

The marriage of Henry II to a daughter of the House of 
Medicis, though it took place when he was as yet only Duke 
of Orleans and the King's younger son, was from the first ex- 
tremely unpopular in France. It was a mesalliance which only 
the bride's enormous dowry and her family influence in Italy 
made possible. She was a daughter of Lorenzo de Medicis 
and Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne.^ Both parents died 
within a few days of her birth, leaving her one of the richest 
heiresses in Europe. When she was fourteen years old her 
uncle, Julien de Medicis, better known as Pope Clement VII, de- 
termined that she should make a brilliant marriage. His first at- 
tempt was to marry her to the Dauphin, but this Francis I, 
though desperately anxious for the Medician support in Italy, 
would not listen to. Even after he had agreed to the match with 
his younger son he still hung back, and it required all the address 
of another of Catherine's uncles, John, Duke of Albany,^ to 
keep him to his bargain. Finally in October, 1533, a train, 
royal in its proportions, set forth from Florence to escort the 
little Duchess to Leghorn, where she was to meet the Pope. The 
country people, it is said, wondered to see the size and mag- 
nificence of this triumphal procession composed of upwards of 
a thousand persons and headed by Catherine riding between 
her cousin, Philip Strozzi, and her half-brother, Alexander de 

^ Thus Catherine and Diane were 2 fjg ^^^ ^ ggj^ gf Alexander, Duke of 

cousins, the latter's father, Jean de Albany, brotherof James III, of Scotland, 

Poitiers, having been a son of Jeanne and had married Anne de la Tour de Bou- 

de Boulogne, aunt of Madeleine de la logne, Catherine's aunt. He was Regent 

Tour d' Auvergne. of Scotland during James V's minority. 

272 



CHENONCEAUX 

Medicis.^ Though no formal announcement had as yet been 
made, and Catherine herself did not know the object of the 
journey until after she started, there were rumors abroad that 
it was a question of her marriage. 

At Leghorn Catherine found the Pope's galley awaiting her. 
It had been magnificently hung with crimson brocade and cloth 
of gold and her own suite of apartments was furnished through- 
out with rare objects selected from the famous Medician collec- 
tions. The journey was continued by water to Marseilles, where 
the party was met by the French court, and the marriage was 
celebrated without delay in order to satisfy the Pope's impa- 
tience. When the dowry, a hundred thousand gold ducats, 
was paid over in the presence of the assembled court, some of 
the French courtiers were heard to murmur audibly that it 
was very little to get for such a mesalliance; whereupon the 
Cardinal Hippolyte replied that they spoke ignorantly, his 
Holiness having engaged to give, in addition, three pearls of 
inestimable value, namely, Genoa, Milan and Naples. The wed- 
ding festivities lasted for thirty days, and then the bride, after 
receiving many costly presents from her uncle, the Pope, in 
addition to much shrewd worldly advice, bade farewell to her 
relatives and countrymen and prepared to enter on her new life. 

Catherine was not handsome, but she was strong and active ; 
she rode extremely well, had large, expressive eyes, beautifully 
shaped neck and arms, and great vivacity ; and she was always 
well dressed. Yet her husband never cared for her; she had 
no following at court, and the marriage, ill-received from the 
beginning, was deeply regretted in France, when, by the sudden 
death of his brother in 1536, Henry became Dauphin. 

1 Called il Duco della Cittd di Penna. the Emperor Charles V's favorite child. 
He was an illegitimate son of Lorenzo Alexander was murdered by Lorenzino 
II, and married the Bastarde Marguerite, de Medicis. 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

The change brought no rehef to the Dauphine. Already 
Diane de Poitiers had acquired a complete ascendency over her 
husband, and her troubles were further aggravated by the 
fact that for ten years after her marriage she had no children. 
Haunted by a dread of being repudiated and sent back to Italy, 
she did all in her power to conciliate, was involved in no scandals 
or intrigues, and won the careless, good-natured liking of the 
King, her father-in-law, by her "modesty and obedience." 
When at length children began to come, she spent most of her 
time in the nursery even after she became Queen, preoccupied 
with minute details of her children's welfare, their health, their 
surroundings and their clothes. 

Thus twenty-six years went by, and then Henry H was acci- 
dentally killed in a tournament by a Scottish knight named 
Montgomery. The Queen expressed exaggerated grief for her 
husband's death, wore weeds for the rest of her life, and al- 
ways maintained the fiction that she had lost a loving and 
adored spouse. Nevertheless, she chafed during the forty days 
of mourning which French etiquette required her to spend in 
the darkened chamber of her late lord, and one of her first 
acts upon emerging once more into the world was to strike a 
blow at her rival. Notwithstanding the extraordinary meas- 
ures taken to safeguard the title of Chenonceaux, the Duchess 
of Valentinois was summoned to resign that property to the 
Queen-mother, and to take in exchange for it the estate of 
Chaumont-sur-Loire, bought by Catherine in 1551. She was 
also ordered to give up the crown jewels which Henry H had 
given her. The Duchess did not care in the least for Chaumont- 
sur-Loire and she dearly loved the chateau on the Cher, but, 
since no one knew better than herself the futility of resistance 
in such cases, she yielded; sorrowfully abandoned her silk- 

274 



CHENONCEAUX 

worms and horticultural experiments, delivered over the crown 
jewels, and departed. The deed of exchange was drawn up 
at Chinon in 1 560. 

Catherine had always wanted Chenonceaux; she had even 
said as much to Francis I, whom she sometimes accompanied 
thither on his hunting expeditions; but no notice was taken 
of the hint and she had the double mortification to see it go 
to her all-fortunate rival. Now that the chateau was hers at 
last she was eager with plans to alter and enlarge it. Diane's 
bridge across the Cher was surmounted by a two-storied gal- 
lery designed for hunting suppers, torchlight dances and fetes 
of every description. The Queen also erected the long, low 
building seen on the right of the approach, now used as stables, 
and made some less happy additions to the main building which 
have since been removed. Elaborate new gardens were like- 
wise laid out by her orders under the direction of Bernard 
Palissy. Before, however, there was time to do any of these 
things she signalized her ownership by giving there, in the 
spring of 1560, a splendid fete to her son, Francis II, and his 
Queen, Mary Stuart. 

The entire court had been almost in a state of siege, shut up 
by the Guises at Amboise during the Renaudie disturbances 
which terminated in dreadful scenes of wholesale executions 
Everyone was thankful to escape from the fortress and the 
"horror of blood" to the smiling chateau on the Cher. 

Primaticcio directed the fete, and the young King and Queen 
made their state entry on March 31 beneath triumphal arches, 
upon which, along with the arms of France and Scotland, ap- 
peared those of England— an idea of Cardinal Lorraine, in- 
tended to emphasize Mary Stuart's claim to the English throne. 

A few days later a singular scene took place at Chenonceaux. 

275 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

The Prince of Conde, who had been the secret leader of the 
Renaudie conspiracy, selecting a moment when the King was 
surrounded by all the gentlemen of his Court, including the 
two Guises, asked for an audience. He recalled the history 
of his House, and their loyal services to the Crown, and com- 
plained of the small consideration with which he had himself 
been treated, declaring that the government of the kingdom 
could quite as safely be confided to his hands and to those of 
the members of his family as to the Guises. 

Then he said that anyone asserting that he had been con- 
cerned in a plot against the person of the King, lied wickedly 
and maliciously, and throwing down his glove, announced that 
he was prepared to maintain this against anyone, high or low, 
excepting always the persons of the King and of the Princes, 
his brothers. 

While the Court looked on stupefied, the Duke of Guise, who, 
as everyone knew, was the disseminator of the report and whose 
overthrow was the object of Conde's plots, with great presence 
of mind stepped quickly forward, and, to the amazement of 
the onlookers, instead of picking up the glove, he offered him- 
self as Conde's second. 

He did not think, he said, that anyone really believed the 
rumor, but at the same time it was satisfactory to have the 
Prince's own testimony to its falsity. Cardinal Lorraine, the 
Duke's brother, remained throughout with his eyes fixed upon 
the ground, without uttering a word, and the bystanders 
thought he seemed perturbed. 

The scene terminated, Conde immediately left the Court, and 
no further action was taken. 

Three years later, in 1563, the Court again took saddle one 

spring day and rode joyously off beneath the budding trees of 

276 



CHENONCEAUX 

the forest from Amboise to Chenonceaux. But in those three 
years many changes had taken place. Francis II was dead, 
and his beautiful young widow had left France forever. The 
Duke of Guise, treacherously wounded near Orleans in the pre- 
vious February, had succumbed six days later ; while, instead of 
a Huguenot massacre, there had this time been enacted at Am- 
boise a measure so tolerant in its tone towards the Reformers 
that for a time it put a stop to the Wars of Religion.^ 

After spending Easter together at Amboise, the Queen- 
mother, with the young King, Charles IX, and her other chil- 
dren, proceeded to Chenonceaux, accompanied by a brilliant 
train. In the company were the new Duke of Guise; Conde's 
nephew, the Prince of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV; Conde 
himself, accompanied by his wife, Eleanor de Roye, and their 
eldest son, the Marquis of Conti; and the Cardinal-Legate of 
Ferrara, a son of the noble House of Este, who had been dis- 
patched to France expressly to watch Catherine. This niece 
of a Pope was suspected, and at that time justly so, not only 
of favoring the Reformers, but of pushing France towards a 
revolt against the Holy See. She was taking the Cardinal- 
Legate with her to Chenonceaux in the hope of lulling his sus- 
picions, and he was allowing her to do so with the expectation 
of finding these more than justified. 

It was Catherine's idea that the waning popularity of the 
Valois Kings could be revived by pageants and revels. Wher- 
ever she went she was accompanied by a troop of beautiful 
young women called in the slang of the day the "flying squad- 
ron," because their attractions formed a regular part of the 
Queen-mother's political armament. On this occasion there 
was a week of uninterrupted festivity. Naval battles and 

iThe Edict of Amboise. signed at Orleans, 19th March, 1563. 
277 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

water fetes on the Cher were followed by fireworks^ and torch- 
light dances in the long galleries, while spirited encounters took 
place in the woods and gardens between troops of gentlemen 
and ladies of the Court disguised as nymphs and satyrs. The 
entertainments wound up with a grand boar-hunt, so ordered 
that the King could give the death-thrust without himself en- 
countering the smallest risk! 

Throughout the revels Catherine's watchful eye was every- 
where. Nothing was done without her knowledge, and she 
flatteringly kept the Princess of Conde at her side, at the same 
time throwing the Prince constantly in the way of Mile. Isabelle 
de Limeuil,^ one of the most beautiful and fascinating young 
women of the day. Conde was soon completely ensnared and 
the Queen-mother, working through her maid of honor, was 
able to make him do whatever she wished, but at the cost of a 
scandal which obliged her later to dismiss Mile, de Limeuil 
from court, while the Princess of Conde died neglected and 
unhappy in July of the following year. 

The most extravagant, however, of all the fetes held at 
Chenonceaux was that given in honor of Catherine's third son, 
Henry III, who succeeded his brother, Charles IX, in 1754. 
By this time the tone of the court, at no time very high under the 
Valois Kings, had still further deteriorated. Henry received 
his guests in the garden, dressed as a woman, with low-cut 
doublet, a string of pearls about his neck, and two high ruffs 
and a deep embroidered collar, after the exaggerated feminine 
fashion of the day. All about him were grouped his "mignons,'' 
curled, painted and scented, and, like himself, wearing huge 
white ruffs. The banquet was served, on the other hand, by 

1 This was one of the first occasions on which fireworks were seen in France. 

2 See p. 322. 

278 



CHENONCEAUX, SHOWING THE CHAPEL TO THE RIGHT 

VIEWED FROM THE LEFT BANK OF THE CHER 



■r~ 






CHENONCEAUX 

the ladies of the Court wearing men's clothing, but with bare 
shoulders and flowing hair. The cost of this entertainment 
alone amounted to 1,500,000 francs in modern money. 

Catherine de Medicis died at Blois in January, 1589, leaving 
Chenonceaux to her daughter-in-law, Louise de Vaudemont- 
Lorraine, the wife of Henry III. This gentle, pious lady was 
living at Chinon in the summer of the same year in such straits 
that she had been obliged to reduce her suite to four ladies-in- 
waiting. Word came early in August that the King had been 
stabbed at St. Cloud by a monk named Jacques Clement. At 
first the doctors said that the wound was not serious and that 
their patient would be able to mount his horse in ten days. He 
wrote a line to the Queen to inform her of his condition: 

Ma Mie: 

You will have heard of my wretched wound. I hope it is 
nothing. Pray for me. 

Adieu, ma Mie 

Before the letter was delivered word had come that the King 
was dead. None of her ladies could summon sufficient courage 
to tell the Queen, and it was at Chenonceaux some days later 
that she learned of her bereavement. 

This third widowed chatelaine of Chenonceaux, gentle, 
affectionate and truly religious, introduced new manners into 
the chateaUs The weeds, white in her case, worn by Diane de 
Poitiers from coquetry, and by Catherine de Medicis from 
policy, were to her veritable mourning garments. She hung 
her room with black draperies sewn with silver tears, and 
beneath her husband's portrait had carved the words: Scevi 
monumenta doloris. The portrait disappeared at the Revo- 
lution, but the motto still remains. 

Louise de Vaudemont had but a meagre income for the 

281 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

widow of a King, yet she contrived not only to live at Chenon- 
ceaux in the state befitting her rank, but to give generously 
to the poor. At her request Philip II of Spain sent her some 
Spanish Capucines, whom she established in the attics of the 
chateau, the quarters but lately vacated by Catherine de Medi- 
cis's "flying squadron," and her charities were so large that 
long after her death the name of ''la Reine Blanche," which 
had been given to her, was still held in affectionate remembrance 
by the country-people, whose interests she ever had at heart. 
There is an existing letter written by her to King Henry IV, 
whom she styles her ''brother and cousin, the King of 
Navarre,"^ in which she asks relief from the depredations of 
his lieutenant, the sieur de Rosny, who, she says, has invaded 
her lands with his soldiers, artillery, horses, men-at-arms, and 
other malefic es de guerre (war-spells), to the great detriment 
of the country-people, "who, I beg you to remember. Monsieur, 
are my vassals, regarded by me like so many beloved children." 
This kindly lady was not able, however, to keep Chenonceaux 
uninterruptedly. When Catherine de Medicis died she left 
debts amounting to 10,000,000 francs. Henry III issued letters 
patent declaring her estate free from all claims or levies, and 
ordered that the creditors should be paid from the sale of her 
personal property, which consisted mainly of the furnishings 
of the Paris hotel. In the disordered time that followed the 
assassination of Henry III, the Duke of Mayenne and the 
Duchess of Montpensier^ got possession of this hotel, with all 
it contained. Henry IV and his wife, Margaret of Valois, 
finding the estate thus hopelessly saddled with debt, renounced 
all claim to it, whereupon the creditors got the letters patent 

^ Henry of Navarre married for his ^ Brother and sister of the Duke of 

first wife Louise's sister-in-law. Mar- Guise, murdered by Henry at Blois. See 
garet of Valois. p. 223. 

282 



CHATEAU OF CHENONCEAUX WITH GALLERY ACROSS THE CHER 



CHENONCEAUX 

of Henry III set aside and sent sheriffs to seize Chenonceaux 
in the name of the law. In 1564 the Reine Blanche had to 
resign the property and to withdraw. 

It seemed for a time as though Chenonceaux were to return 
to the gay traditions of former days, for Gabrielle d'Estrees, 
Henry IVth's favorite, was the next purchaser. She, however, 
had an object in buying it and never proposed to live there. 

Louise de Vaudemont's brother, the Duke of MontccEur, had 
been a most uncompromising supporter of the League,^ and 
was among the last to lend it armed support in Brittany, where 
he was Governor. His little six-year-old daughter, Frangoise 
de Lorraine, was not only sole heiress of the House of 
Penthievre, but also in part of the huge fortunes of the Houses 
of Lorraine and Luxembourg. What Gabrielle d'Estrees now 
proposed was to negotiate a pardon for the Duke of Montcoeur 
on condition that his daughter should be betrothed to Cesar, 
the four-year-old son of herself and King Henry IV, and that 
the Duke should further resign the title of Duke of Vendome 
and the office of Governor of Brittany in favor of his future 
son-in-law. For her own part, she offered to hand over 
Chenonceaux to Louise de Vaudemont for life, with the under- 
standing that at her death it should go to the young couple. 
All of these arrangements were duly carried out except that 
the Duchess of Montcoeur immediately succeeded the Reine 
Blanche on the latter's death in 1601 and the Vendomes did 
not take possession until 1623. 

Like most of his predecessors at Chenonceaux, Cesar de 
Vendome at once set about making changes. He cut down a 
number of trees planted by Diane de Poitiers and was re- 
arranging the whole plan of the grounds when the discovery 

1 See p. 48. 
285 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

of the Plot of Chalais, in which he had been concerned, put a 
stop to his activities.^ He was arrested and imprisoned at 
Amboise. Though hberated later, he feared to remain in France 
within reach of Richelieu's long arm, and went to Italy, where 
he passed many years, waiting for the end of the Cardinal's 
regime. His son, the Duke of Beaufort, meanwhile occupied 
Chenonceaux occasionally and was visited there in 1637 by 
Gaston d'Orleans and his daughter, the "Grande Mademoiselle." 
At last, in 1650, the Duke of Vendome, returned from exile, 
is found magnificently entertaining Anne of Austria and her 
son, Louis XIV, then twelve years old, at Chenonceaux, along 
with Cardinal Mazarin. One result of this visit, the last paid 
there by royalty, was the marriage of Cesar de Vendome's son 
to Mazarin's niece, Laura Mancini. 

From the Dukes of Vendome Chenonceaux passed to the 
family of Bourbon through the marriage in 17 10 of the Duke 
of Vendome, one of the great captains of Louis XlVth's time, 
to Mile. d'Enghien, the extremely ugly granddaughter of the 
great Conde. She outlived her husband, and, dying childless, 
the estate passed first to her mother, the Princess of Conde, and 
then to her nephew, the Duke of Bourbon, who sold it in 1733 
to M. Claude Dupin, fermier general under Louis XV. Mean- 
time the property had fallen into a deplorable state of disrepair. 
Sequestered in 1677, for twenty years it had been administered 
in the interests of the Duke of Vendome's creditors ; the timber 

1 The Chalais Conspiracy began in 1625 Duke of Orleans on the throne. When it 

with a court intrigue to prevent the mar- was discovered the Duke sacrificed his 

riage of Gaston of Orleans, Louis Xlllth's friends and agreed to the marriage, 

brother, to Mile, de Montpensier, step- Henry de Talleyrand, Marquis of Cha- 

daughter of the Duke of Guise. Later it lais, the nominal chief, was beheaded, 

developed into a plot against Richelieu, and some of the others died in prison, 
with the possible object of placing the 

286 



( 



CHENONCEAUX 

was cut, the fountains and gardens allowed to fall into ruin, 
and no repairs were made of any kind. All of this, M. and Mme. 
Dupin set to work to remedy; during their time Chenonceaux 
recovered something of its former eclat, and became a resort 
of many of the most famous men and women of the day. There 
Jean Jacques Rousseau, engaged for a time as tutor to their 
only son, wrote plays which were acted in the long gallery; 
Buffon discovered new beauties in the lately restored gardens, 
and such notabilities as Voltaire, Fontenelle, the Abbe St. 
Pierre, Montesquieu, Lord Bolingbroke, and Lord Chesterfield 
made up the brilliant society of Mme. Dupin's salon. This 
amiable and clever lady was, moreover, held in such universal 
esteem that even when the Revolution came she was not dis- 
turbed, but, old, widowed, and childless, was allowed to finish 
her days at Chenonceaux in peace. She died there in 1799 at 
the age of ninety-three. 

The rest of the history of Chenonceaux is quickly told. The 
chateau was inherited by the Count of Villeneuve, a great- 
nephew of Mme. Dupin, who was at the same time M. Dupin's 
great-grandson by a former wife.^ This gentleman married 
Mile. Apolline de Guibert, daughter of Count de Guibert, famous 
as the author of Napoleon's favorite treatise on tactics and 
also as the friend of Mile, de Lespinasse. M. de Villeneuve was 
made chamberlain to the King of Holland, and his wife was 
a lady-in-waiting to Queen Hortense. They kept the chateau 
in good repair, and Mme. de Villeneuve, who was an enthu- 
siastic botanist, restored the gardens to all their ancient glory. 
After them came M. Pelouze, son of the well-known chemist, 

1 Another great-grandchild of M. Dupin who sometimes visited 
Chenonceaux was George Sand. 

287 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

who spent so much money on aherations, in very doubtful taste, 
that the next to fall heir to the chateau was the Credit Foncier. 
Finally, in 1891, Chenonceaux came most happily into the pos- 
session of its present proprietor, Mr. Terry, a Cuban, under 
whose careful and thorough restoration the building of Kath- 
erine Brigonnet, of Diane de Poitiers, and of Catherine de 
Medicis has emerged once more in all its original gaiety and 
charm. 



288 



CHATEAU OF CHENONCEAUX WITH GALLERY ACROSS 
THE CHER— ANOTHER VIEW 



AZAY-LE-RIDEAU 



MAIN ENTRANCE TO CHATEAU OF AZAY-LE-RIDEAU 



CHAPTER XI 



AZAY-LE-RIDEAU 



QUITE in an opposite direction from Tours to that of 
Chenonceaux is another chateau belonging to the 
same class and period, which likewise owes its 
existence to one of that family of financiers of 
which Thomas Bohier was a member. 

Azay-le-Rideau stands on the banks of the Indre in the midst 
of a level park planted with groves of fine old trees and bril- 
liant flower-beds, and with a system of artificial waterways 
sometimes confined within the limits of the moat, sometimes 
spreading out into wide, still ponds, lily-fringed, and reflecting 
the towers and pinnacles of the chateau. 

The entrance to the grounds is by a mellow Renaissance 
gateway, beyond which a broad sweep of carriage-drive 
bordered with lemon and orange-trees in tubs leads to 
the moat and drawbridge; then comes a raised terrace, on two 
sides of which rises the main building, large and nearly square, 
with a single wing at right angles ; at every corner of the build- 
ing is a corbelled tourelle. The ornamentation of the fagade 
is a marvel of richness and simple elegance; twin doors sur- 
mounted by three pairs of windows form the general design 
of the portal, and above the doors and below the dormers are 

295 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

the salamander of Francis I and the ermine of Claude of 
France,^ with their mottoes, Nutrisco et extinguo and Ung seul 
desir.- 

In the summer of 1418 the Dauphin, afterwards Charles VII, 
was rallying the scattered Armagnacs^ and endeavoring to 
chase the Burgundians out of his own province of Touraine. 
One day in June as he was marching his men past Azay-le- 
Rideau along the highroad leading from Chinon to Tours, the 
party was espied from the chateau by a Burgundian garrison 
then in possession, who called out gibingly: "There go the 
leavings of the little Paris pates !" in playful allusion to a hor- 
rible massacre of Armagnacs that had recently occurred at 
Paris. The Dauphin's troops were so enraged by the taunt 
that they instantly flung themselves upon the place and carried 
it by assault. The Governor was beheaded and the garrison, 
to the number of three hundred and fifty, were hanged from 
the battlements. In the course of the fight the attacking party 
set fire to some outlying buildings, the flames spread and the 
town was so nearly destroyed that from then to the end of the 
XVIth century it figures even in ofBcial documents as Asay-le- 
Brule. Some twenty-five years later, in dread of the English 
on the one hand and of the Praguerie^ on the other, the remnant 
of the inhabitants petitioned the King to allow them to put 
up a wall of defence; they urged that "the town had already 
been so utterly ruined by fire in a time of war that few 
habitations were left and most of its people had gone else- 
where to live, leaving the said town almost deserted and without 
revenues." After getting their walls, however, the townspeople 

* Claude of France was a daughter of her mother and adopted the ermine as her 
Louis XII and Anne of Brittany. She device, 
inherited the Duchy of Brittany from ^ See p. 122. ^ See p. 102. 

296 



CHATEAU OF AZAY-LE-RIDEAU, WEST FACADE 



AZAY-LE-RIDEAU 

became so stiff-necked that they decHned to bear their part in 
the defence of the castle, and even refused to give up their 
brand-new keys upon the summons of their lawful chatelaine, 
the noble et puissante damoiselle, Catherine du Puy de Fou, 
who had to take legal proceedings before the men of Azay-le- 
Rideau could be made to yield. The fortifications were not 
completed till the following reign, when Louis XI gave the 
completed permission to tax themselves for the purpose. 

"The history of Azay-le-Rideau is the history of all the small 
towns of this district in the XVth and XVIth centuries. Dread 
of the English, dread of the undisciplined forces of the various 
political factions and later of the different religious bodies, 
drove the inhabitants to build walls of defence, and, by them- 
selves taking measures for their own security, to depend less 
and less upon either king or seigneur. The crown, whose policy 
it was to multiply these points of resistance, encouraged 
them, while the nobles sometimes helped, sometimes retarded 
the movement ; but all the time the self-imposed levies and taxes 
and the necessity for common action and mutual support were 
slowly paving the way for the communal life of a later age."' 

About the year 1450 the ch? eau was bought by a rich bour- 
geois of Tours named Bertholet. One of his daughters married 
Jean Brigonnet, afterwards Cardinal St. Malo, and another 
married Jacques de Beaune-Semblengay, while a daughter of 
the first, Katherine Brigonnet, became the wife of Thomas 
Bohier of Chenonceaux. Thanks to these family connections, 
Gilles Bertholet, a grandson of the purchaser of Azay-le-Rideau. 
obtained a succession of important posts; he was may^r of 
Tours and became eventually one of the four generaux des 
Unances of France. As in the case of his cousin's husband, 

» Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Touraine. 
299 



THE CHATEAUX OE TOURAINE 

Thomas Bohier, these were no barren honors ; Gilles Bertholet 
made a large fortune, some of which he happily expended in 
rebuilding the old castle of Azay-le-Rideau in the lovely form 
in which we see it to-day. As at Chenonceaux, however, 
the fall of the Semblencay administration came before the 
work was quite finished. Jacques de Beaune-Semblencay had 
been placed by Francis I, in 1518, in complete control of the 
finances of France, and he had the management not only of 
the King's revenues, but also of those of "Madame," Louise 
of Savoy, Francis's mother. Extraordinary sums of money 
were required for the war in Italy, and Semblengay resorted 
to extraordinary expedients to raise them; the finances of the 
kingdom became terribly involved, the deficit increased year 
by year, and still the King and Madame cried, "More! more!" 
Finally Semblengay reached the end of his resources; then he 
was seized and thrown into prison on a charge of falsifying 
the accounts of Madame and of having loaned money to the 
Crown from his own banking-house at an exorbitant rate of 
interest. He was tried, found guilty of "irregularities" in his 
accounts, and hanged at Montfaucon nth August, 1527. 

Gilles Bertholet, taking warning by his chief's fall, had al- 
ready fled to Germany, where he died in exile ; his property was 
confiscated and Azay-le-Rideau passed into possession of one 
Antoine Raflin, a captain of the Royal Guard. 

A reminder of the Bertholets exists in the carved G and P 
seen below the eaves at the east end of the chateau— the initial 
letters of Gilles Bertholet and his wife, Philippe Lesbahy. The 
vacant squares between them once held the letters B and L, 
but, according to local tradition, the latter pair was removed 
by Antoine Raflin with the idea of pleasing the King when 
on one occasion he was expected at Azay-le-Rideau. 

300 



CHATEAU OF AZAY-LE-RIDEAU: SHOWING THE MOAT 



SIDE ENTRANCE TO THE CHATEAU OF AZAY-LE-RIDEAU 



AZAY-LE-RIDEAU 

The main points of interest in the interior are a splendid 
stairway and some fine carved chimney-pieces. There are also 
the historic rooms, that in which Napoleon spent a night on 
his return from the Peninsular campaign, and another, oc- 
cupied at different times by Francis I, by Louis XIII, and by 
Louis XIV, but the famous collection of portraits that once 
hung there has gone, alas! the way of the hammer. In 1901 
the Marquis de Biencourt, whose family had owned the chateau 
for something over a hundred years, sold the property ; the pic- 
tures, together with a valuable collection of old furniture, were 
sent to Paris and dispersed at auction. 

The church standing in the grounds dates in part from the 
Xllth century, but it has been poorly restored, and, except for 
the graceful doorway leading into the seigneurial chapel, is 
without interest. 

No great historical events have ever taken place at Azay-le- 
Rideau; it attracts solely on the score of its exquisite beauty, 
together with its place in the history of French architecture. 

"Azay-le-Rideau, Chenonceaux, the chateau of Loches, Am- 
boise and Blois," says Viollet-le-Duc, "are among the most 
brilliant expressions of the French Renaissance, the most strik- 
ing examples of the application of our ancient national art." 



305 



I[ 



CHAUMONT 



CHAPTER XII 



CHAUMONT 



THE chateau of Chaumont lies on the route between 
Tours and Blois, that is to say, it lies off the route, and 
the traveller must alight at a little station called 
Onzain, cross the Loire, and follow up the left bank for some 
distance (about a mile in all from the station) before arriving 
at the park gates. Here he is required to leave his vehicle and 
proceed the rest of the way on foot. 

The grounds, which appear to be both beautiful and well 
kept, are not open to the public, and at every footpath signs 
warn the too enquiring stranger that he must keep to the car- 
riage drive and stray neither to the right nor to the left. The 
road, hemmed in on either side by steep banks, ascends steadily 
from the park gates, and after making a wide curve comes out 
on a sunny level space gay with beds of geraniums and scarlet 
sage. On the right stands the chateau, occupying the western 
extremity of the plateau and protected on this side by a deep 
moat. 

In the latter part of the Xth century this tract of high level 
ground was known as the "Garenne de la Comtesse," and on 
it Eudes I, Count of Blois, son of Thibaud le Tricheur,^ built 

iSee p. 112. 

309 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

a strong tower. Who the "Comtesse" was, or how the Count 
of Blois came to build his keep upon her warren, are questions 
to which at this day no answers are forthcoming. 

The next Count gave the tower and domain of Chaumont 
to his follower, the sieur of Fontlevoy, a collateral descendant 
of whom, Sulpice II, of Amboise, inherited it and the neigh- 
boring chateau of Amboise as well in 1129, thus becoming the 
vassal at once of the Count of Blois and of the latter's hereditary 
enemy, the Count of Anjou. 

Egged on by the Count of Anjou (Henry II, of England) 
Sulpice defied his suzerain of Blois, incited others of the neigh- 
boring barons to do the same, and with them for a term of years 
he led the joyous and inconsequent life of a robber chief. They 
swept forth from Chaumont on wild forays, terrorized the sur- 
rounding country, and held high revel in the gloomy old keep. 
But all things have an end, and this career of gaiety and excite- 
ment was brought to a sudden stop when Thibaud V, Count of 
Blois, captured his rebellious vassal together with his two sons 
and threw them into his strong donjon of Chateaudun. After 
enduring tortures indescribable, Sulpice died here in 11 54, but 
some years later one of his sons recovered the family estates, 
and Chaumont remained with his descendants, though not in 
the direct line, till 1550, when Catherine de Medicis bought it 
from the heirs. 

In the time of Louis XI, the chief of the family of Chaumont- 
Amboise had been Pierre d' Amboise, Sieur de Chaumont. He 
joined the Ligue du Bien Public^ in 1465 and was punished by 
having his chateau razed to the ground. Later the King re- 
lented and allowed Pierre's son, Charles, successively Council- 

^ A plot fortred in 1464 by the great feudatory lords to depose Louis XI and 
to place his brother, Charles, Duke of Berry, on the throne. 

310 



CHATEAU OF CHAUMONT: ENTRANCE 



CHAUMONT 

lor, Chamberlain, and Governor of Tile de France, to rebuild it 
at the expense of the Crown, and very handsomely and solidly 
he did it as can be seen to this day. 

By the latter part of the XVth century the day of feudal archi- 
tecture was over : we have seen the change at Plessis-les-Tours 
and at Loches. Yet Charles d'Amboise must have been a man 
of conservative tastes, for Chaumont preserves all the character- 
istics of the feudal fortress; the enormously thick walls, the 
moat and draw-bridge, the massive towers, the machicolations 
and battlements ; the whole rising from a lofty plateau overlook- 
ing the Loire on the one hand and fahing sharply away from 
both ends of the chateau. 

The moat is spanned by a draw-bridge flanked by two round 
towers with pointed roofs, and beside the main portal are two 
smaller towers admirably carved with large interlaced C's, 
standing for the two Charleses d'Amboise, the Chamberlain, and 
the Grand Master who finished the chateau; and with volca- 
noes in eruption, as a play upon the name Chaumont (chaud 
mont). Above the portal is the shield of the house of Amboise 
between the letters L and A, for Louis XII, and Anne of Brit- 
tany, and the latter's device of the cord and tassel. On the right 
are the arms of Georges d'Amboise, brother of Charles, and 
over a window on the oposite wall his Cardinal's hat is carved. 

A vaulted passage-way leads from the draw-bridge to an open 
court. Around three sides run the buildings of the chateau and 
on the fourth is a wide terrace, looking down from whence you 
realize for the first time the strength of the position. The 
rock descends sheer to what seems to be a great distance and the 
river runs so close to its base as to leave room only for a narrow 
strip of land. 

The two most striking objects in the court are a dark cedar of 

313 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

Lebanon, whose horizontal branches, stirred by the west wind, 
knock and beat against the chapel walls, and a carved stone well 
of fine workmanship surmounted by some ornamental wrought- 
iron work. On the south are the private apartments, and across 
the lower end is an arcaded gallery, from whence a spiral stair 
leads to the historic rooms on the north. 

Pierre d'Amboise, the father of the builder of Chaumont, had 
seventeen children; the eldest was Charles, the Chamberlain, 
and the most famous was the Cardinal, Georges, who, indeed, 
was a very great personage, and in a sense the precursor of 
those other Cardinal-Ministers of the next Louis's reign. 

Georges d'Amboise was made Archbishop of Rouen at thirty- 
eight, later he became Cardinal and then Legate ; but his great 
sphere lay in the influence he exercised over Louis XIL He 
had been that Prince's trusted friend and confidant when, as 
Duke of Orleans, he had engaged in more than one hazardous 
plot ; then, when the Duke became King, d'Amboise knew how 
to maintain his position. Tact he must certainly have pos- 
sessed, for when Louis and his chere Bretonne quarrelled, as 
not infrequently happened, the Cardinal was the only person 
who could make the Queen listen to reason or argue the King 
back into a good humor. No wonder Louis had a high opinion 
of his Chancellor's ability ; a man who interferes between hus- 
band and wife and is not detested by both can safely be trusted 
to handle the most delicate affairs, and laisses faire a Georges 
came to be the King's solution for most troublesome questions. 

Georges, as has been said, was one of a huge family. He 
placed most of his relatives in good positions and especially ad- 
vanced his nephew Charles, the finisher of Chaumont, whom he 
made Grand Master at the age of twenty-five. Brantome, the 
historian, says that Charles d'Amboise was entirely governed 

3^^ 



APPROACH TO THE CHATEAU OF CHAUMONT: THE LOIRE 

AT THE LEFT 



CHAUMONT 

by his uncle, the Cardinal, that he received all his instructions 
from him and obeyed them to the letter, and he adds that when 
news came of the Cardinal's death, his nephew had no more 
pleasure in life and presently died too, of sorrow. Charles's 
death did, indeed, follow close after the Cardinal's, but whether 
from grief or from poison, as some thought, is not known. 

Georges d'Amboise had, however, one darling ambition that 
was never realized. He had fixed his hopes upon the Papacy 
and, it was said, might have got it had he only been a little less 
confident. At the moment when Alexander VI died (1503) 
Rome was practically at the mercy of the French troops. These 
the Cardinal was induced to withdraw on the pretence that 
their presence might give an impression of coercion in the mat- 
ter of his election; but, no sooner had the troops left than the 
crafty Italians, who had given the advice, promptly elected 
Pius HI. The new Pope only survived four weeks, but then it 
was too late, the opportunity had gone by forever, and Julius II 
was chosen to succeed him. 

Cardinal d'Amboise died in 15 10, preserving the King's af- 
fection and confidence to the last, and his nephew had time, be- 
fore following him to the grave, to erect a magnificent tomb over 
his remains in the cathedral church of his see at Rouen. 

In 1550 Chaumont was the property of an Antoinette d'Am- 
boise ; she had married a spendthrift, Louis de Luxembourg, for 
her third husband, and her children by her second marriage 
and heirs agreed with her to sell Chaumont to the Queen. 

Catherine de Medicis, the new proprietor, made frequent 
stays at Chaumont ; she fitted up a room in the donjon for her 
favorite astrologer, the Italian, Cosimo Ruggieri, and here, in 
the autumn of 1559, she came in great trouble to consult him. 

Henry II had died some months before (loth July, 1559), 

317 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

and at first it looked as though that event would certainly bring 
her relief from the mortifying position she had always held 
during her husband's lifetime. With Francis II, King, feeble 
both in body and mind, and hitherto wholly under her control, 
the Queen-mother thought that surely her troubles were at an 
end, instead of which the Guises promptly rose up to harass her. 
They were uncles to the young Queen, Mary Stuart, her 
mother's brothers, and this beautiful and winning and highly 
gifted young wife easily induced her husband to put himself en- 
tirely in their hands rather than in those of his mother. This 
was troublesome, but worse still, the King, hardly recovered 
from one severe illness, was now attacked by a strange and hor- 
rible disease. Mysterious fires shone from his glassy eyes, 
his face was livid and covered with sores, and he steadily lost 
strength. In this extremity Catherine could think of no better 
expedient than to consult Ruggieri's arts, and she came to Chau- 
mont for that purpose. 

The short October day was drawing to a close when the 
Queen-mother entered Ruggieri's room, situated in the donjon 
at the northwest corner of the pile. Through small windows 
cut in walls of enormous thickness, the red evening light entered 
with difficulty, showing vaguely the outlines of the astrologer's 
mysterious paraphernalia, skins of dead animals, bones, foreign- 
looking instruments, minerals and drugs, parchments and maps 
of the heavens, all scattered about in studied confusion. 

The Queen first demanded to be shown the horoscopes of 
her four sons, but the result filled her with dismay. They were 
all, it appeared, to wear royal crowns (the Duke d'Alengon did 
not, however), yet all were to die young and childless, and two 
of violent deaths. Horrified, the mother asked for some other 
sign by which these fearful prognostications might be tested. 

318 



CHATEAU OF CHAUMONT, VIEW FROM COURT-YARD 



CHAUMONT 

The astrologer then led her to a mirror, in which, he said, she 
would see reflected the future kings of France; each would 
make as many turns as the number of years he was destined 
to reign. 

Catherine waited anxiously, and presently a languid, melan- 
choly figure drifted across the mirror's surface ; she recognized 
her son Francis and held her breath. Slowly he began to turn 
himself about, but before he had completed an entire circle he 
faded out of sight and the Queen knew that her first-born 
would die before the year was out. Next came Charles IX; 
he solemnly gyrated thirteen and a half times, then disap- 
peared. After him Henry III took fifteen turns and followed 
his brothers. Then Henry of Navarre entre sur la carriere, 
gaillard et dispost; he made twenty complete circuits and was 
briskly engaging upon the twenty-first when he suddenly van- 
ished. Finally there came a little Prince, but eight or nine 
years old, who solemnly whirled and whirled, till, having com- 
pleted thirty revolutions, and having apparently no intention 
of stopping, the unhappy Queen-mother declared she had seen 
enough, and instantly the mirror became a blank. Such, at 
all events, is the account of the adventure given by a contem- 
porary.^ 

Adjoining Ruggieri's room is Catherine's own apartment, 
furnished with ancient tapestries and the bed and toilet-table 
and prie-dieu of the Queen, and on the last her livre d'heures, 
lying, as though she had but just passed out from her devotions. 

Shortly after the experience described above Catherine parted 
with Chaumont to her rival, Diane de Poitiers. It was not, 
however, an act of grace. The beautiful Diane, as has been 
seen, was living at the time quite happily at Chenonceaux,^ 

^Nicolas, son of Etienne Pasquier, a member of the States General in the 
reign of Henry III. ^See p. 274. 

321 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

devoting herself to horticulture, and desired nothing less than 
to leave it for Chaumont, but she was not given her choice. 
Although she came there but seldom, spending most of her time 
at her two estates of Limours and Anet, her room at Chaumont 
is still shown, furnished throughout in black and white, the 
half-mourning she always affected after the death of her hus- 
band, the Seneschal. When Diane died the estate passed to her 
daughter, Frangoise, Duchess of Bouillon. 

After changing hands several times Chaumont was sold in 
1594 to Scipion Sardini, who had come a penniless adventurer 
to seek his fortune in France, and, under the protection of the 
Queen-mother, had quickly found it. He contrived to make him- 
self indispensable to Henry HI, and later on married the beauti- 
ful Isabelle de la Tour-Limeuil, one of Catherine's gay maids of 
honor. Chaumont remained in the hands of the descendants 
of this pair until 1699, when it was bought by Paul, Duke of 
Beauvillier, governor to the royal Princess in the time of Louis 
XIV, and a great favorite with Madame de Maintenon. 

During the XVUIth century Chaumont was sold and resold, 
but among its various proprietors one at least, Bertin 
de Vaugien, has left a lasting memorial of himself and of his 
ownership. The original chateau of the dAmboises had con- 
sisted of four wings built around a court; de Vaugien pulled 
down the entire west wing and in its place constructed that 
terrace which, commanding as it does one of the fairest views 
in all the valley of the Loire, adds so immeasurable a charm 
to the chateau. 

The next proprietor was Jacques Donatien Le Ray, who 
bought Chaumont in 1750 and tried to turn the estate 
to account by establishing a terra cotta manufactory in the 
grounds. Financially the enterprise was not a success, but 

322 



I 



CHAUMONT 

some interesting survivals of it remain in a series of beauti- 
fully executed terra cotta medallions by an Italian named Nini, 
which are preserved in the chateau. Among the likenesses of 
famous XVIIIth century belles and gallants it is amusing 
suddenly to be confronted with the benevolent features and 
flowing locks of Benjamin Franklin. Le Ray-Chaumont, as 
he styled himself, was, in fact, a personal friend of Franklin, 
and immensely interested in the American struggle for inde- 
pendence. Unfortunately he hazarded most of his fortune in 
some colonization scheme that turned out badly. His son went 
to America to see if anything could be done, and while there, 
though failing to rescue his patrimony, he got himself a wife.^ 
Meanwhile, however, his chateau was not deserted. 

Madame de Stael, ordered by Napoleon to keep at forty 
leagues' distance from Paris, was casting about in the summer 
of 1810 for some convenient spot from which to superintend 
the publication of her work on Germany, then passing through 
the press. Her choice fell upon Chaumont, and there, with 
her family, her children's tutors, and as many of her friends 
as could be induced to brave the possible displeasure of the 
Emperor, she established herself in the absence of the owner. 

Augustus, Baron de Stael-Holstein, in the notes to his 
mother's "Ten Years of Exile," says of this incident: "The pres- 
ent proprietor of this romantic residence, M. Le Ray, with 
whom my parents were connected by the ties of friendship 
and business, was then in America. Just at the time we were 
occupying his chateau he returned from the United States with 
his family, and though he was very urgent in wishing us to 
remain in his house, the more he pressed us politely to do so, 
the more anxiety we felt lest we should incommode him." 

^ He married a lady belonging to the New Jersey family of Grant Coxe. 
38 323 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

Fortunately a friend came to the rescue with an offer of a 
neighboring farm-house called Fosse, and thither the whole 
party removed. 

"This house," writes Madame de Stael in her Memoirs, 
"was occupied by a Vendean soldier who certainly did not keep 
it in the nicest order, but who had a loyal good-nature that 
made everything easy, and an originality of character that 
was very amusing. . . I had always the intention of repairing 
to England by way of America, but I was anxious to terminate 
my work on Germany. The season was advancing; we were 
already at the 15 th of September, and I began to foresee that 
the difficulty of embarking my daughter with me would detain 
me another winter in some town, I knew not where, at 40 
leagues from Paris 

On the 23d of September Mme. de Stael corrected the last 
proofs of "Germany," a work of which she entertained the very 
highest hopes; her publishers informed her that it had been 
passed by the censor, and in a very happy frame of mind she 
set out with some of her friends on a little excursion in the 
neighborhood. The party managed to lose their way and were 
gone two nights; on her return Mme. de Stael was met with 
the news that the entire edition of her book had been seized 
and that she herself was ordered to quit France within three 
days. No reason was given for this harsh treatment beyond 
some vague allusions to the "line of conduct you have con- 
stantly pursued for several years past." It was understood, 
however, that the offence lay in there being no allusion to 
either the Emperor or the army in the book. She abandoned 
her plan of going to America, and returned once more to her 
exile at Coppet. 

In 1833 ^- Le Ray sold Chaumont to Count Sauvan dAra- 

324 



CHATEAU OF CHAUMONT: VIEW FROM THE RIGHT BANK 

OF THE LOIRE 



CHAUMONT 

mon. He and his wife, and later the latter's second husband, 
Vicomte Walsh/ thoroughly restored the chateau, which in 
1875 was again sold, to Mile. Say, now the Princesse de Broglie. 
These latest proprietors have finished the restoration, added 
a line of stables, capable, it is said, of housing a hundred horses, 
and have given to the historic apartments as nearly as possible 
their XVIth century aspect. Ancient tapestries cover the walls, 
the rooms are furnished in the rich and elegant fashion of "the 
epoch," and in the chapel, at one side of the altar, hangs the 
Cardinal's hat of Georges dAmboise. All is stately, well- 
ordered, dignified. You have the impression of an inhabited 
and eminently habitable dwelling in which the historic associa- 
tions have been entirely preserved. 

^ Edward, fourth Earl Walsh, great- escorted Prince Charles Edward to Scot- 
grandson of Anthony Vincent Walsh, land in the expedition of 1745. He was 
who fitted out two vessels at his own ex- created Earl Walsh by the Chevalier de 
pense, on one of which, La Doutelle, he St. George. 



327 



CHAMBORD AND CHEVERNEY 



A^ 






v-'v 'X-'! 



EASTERN FACADE OF THE CHATEAU OF CHAMBORD 



CHAPTER XIII 

CHAMBORD AND CHEVERNEY 

THE chateaux of Chambord and Cheverney are neither 
of them near a railroad, but they can be visited from 
Blois, in the course of a single drive, what the cabmen 
call the grande tournee. 

After crossing the Loire the road runs for miles through 
a perfectly flat, uninteresting country, as uniform and sparsely 
inhabited, apparently, as it was in the year 1810, when Madame 
de Stael and a party of friends contrived to lose themselves 
there one autumn evening.^ They were rescued some time after 
midnight by an opportune young man on horseback, who, find- 
ing them driving aimlessly about in the forest, carried them 
all off to his father's chateau for the rest of the night. 

It was probably Francis Fs passion for huntmg that made 
him select this dreary country in which to build a vast chateau, 
taking for his site the feudal fortress of "Chambourg," a 
domain of the old Counts of Blois that had passed to the House 
of Orleans and eventually to the Crown. He began to build 
in 1 5 19, three years after his accession, yet, notwithstanding 
the huge sums of money expended, and the eighteen hundred 
workmen employed, at the King's death, twenty-eight years 

^ See p. 324. 

333 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

later, only the central building and that part of the east wing 
which contains his own suite of apartments were finished. 
Henry II added another wing, but after his time there was no 
further attempt to carry out the original plan, and to this day 
Chambord, enormous as it is, remains uncompleted. 

The chateau stands on the banks of the little river Cosson 
and in the midst of a park twenty square miles in area. It is 
approached by long, level roads, cut through the underbrush 
and waste of stunted trees which since 1821 have replaced the 
ancient forest, and their perspectives terminate in that strange 
and fantastic jumble of towers and pinnacles, chimneys and 
domes which make the roofs of Chambord unlike any other 
roofs in the world. 

The designer of the chateau was Pierre Nepveu or Trinqueau, 
the architect of Chenonceaux, whom Francis also employed at 
Blois. The central building forms a huge parallelogram, 
flanked by massive corner towers, a survival of the square 
feudal donjon keep. On the north, the side facing the river, 
there are two wings of unequal length terminating in round 
towers corresponding to those of the main building. From 
these towers two other wings extend at right angles, also 
terminating in towers and connected on the south by a line of 
one-storied offices. 

The most striking views are from the court, whence the 
entire group of buildings can be seen. Except for the two 
charming stair-towers, placed at the northwest and northeast 
angles of the court, the lower parts of the chateau are quite 
plain ; it is only where the roof begins that it blossoms out into 
that wild exuberance of peaks and turrets and pinnacles. 

In the interior the central building is mainly taken up by a 
vast Guard room in the form of a cross, whose four arms, ex- 

334 



CHATEAU OF CHAMBORD, FA9ADE FACING THE COSSON 



CHAMBORD 

tending north, south, east and west, between the corner towers, 
are united in the centre by the wonderful double stair. Three 
sections of the Guard room are now divided into stories, but 
the fourth, left open as in the original plan, extends up to a 
carved stone barrel-roof cut into squares in which the letter F 
and the salamander of Francis I alternate. 

The famous stair, which rises through the centre of the 
building from ground to roof, is surmounted by an open lantern 
capped by the single fleur-de-lys that escaped the Revolution, the 
loftiest point of the chateau. It is formed by two spirals start- 
ing from different points and at different elevations and winding 
about the same central hollow shaft. This shaft, as well as 
the outer wall of support, is of open carved stone-work, and 
thus, although two people may pass up and down eternally with- 
out ever meeting, they will constantly catch flying and tantaliz- 
ing glimpses of one another across the intervening well. 

The one overmastering impression made upon the mind by 
Chambord is that of space, vast, limitless space. As one wan- 
ders through the great empty Guard rooms stretching away 
to the four points of the compass, through the interminable 
wings with their four hundred and forty rooms and fifty stair- 
cases, through the intricate network of buildings on the roof — 
a veritable little town in itself— it seems impossible that any 
sane person should ever have planned such a place merely as 
a hunting seat; yet that is what Francis I built it for, and the 
sole use to which he ever put it. In 1539 the Emperor, Charles 
V, was entertained there, and found such good sport that he 
stayed on for five days pour la delectation de la chasse a^ix daims. 
Six years later Francis returned, this time hoping to find dis- 
traction for himself in his favorite pastime from the black care 
and failing health that were settling down upon him. He lin- 

337 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

gered on for several melancholy months, taking no pleasure in 
anything but the society of his adoring sister, Margaret, who, 
as soon as she heard of her brother's condition, hastened to 
Chambord with a little suite of artists and men of letters whose 
conversation she hoped might still have power to interest the 
moody King. Francis, it is said, gave vent one day to his dis- 
illusionment by scratching the distich : 

Souvent femme varie 
Mai habile qui s'y fie. 

on a pane of glass in the study of his private suite, where it 
remained until one day when Louis XIV smashed the pane to 
satisfy the vanity of Louise de la Valliere. 

Notwithstanding the additions he made to the chateau, Henry 
II came there but little, and his sons and Henry IV still less. 
In 1626 Louis XIII gave Chambord, together with the county 
of Blois and the duchies of Orleans and Chartres, to his brother, 
Gaston of Orleans, in reward for the betrayal by the latter of 
his friends of the Chalais conspiracy^ and for agreeing to marry 
Mile, de Montpensier. Some of the conspirators were exe- 
cuted, others died in prison, and Gaston lost his wife in the year 
succeeding their marriage, but none of these events appear to 
have made even a passing impression upon him. It is said of him 
that "his vivacity was something quite extraordinary. When 
he was no longer young his servants had to button his clothes 
on the run. He spun and pirouetted continually, one hand 
thrust in his pocket, his cap pulled over one ear, and always 
whistling." His daughter, the "Grande Mademoiselle," tells in 
her Memoirs of a visit she paid as a child to her father at 
Chambord, and of the characteristic reception he gave her. 
"Monsieur," who was at the top of the double stair when the 

1 See p. 282 (Note 2). 



CHATEAU OF CHAMBORD, LANTERN . AND SUMMIT 
OF THE DOUBLE STAIR 



CHAMBORD 

little girl arrived, called to her to come to him. As she flew up 
one flight her frolicsome parent ran down the other; puzzled, 
she gave chase only to find when she reached the bottom that 
he was again at the top. ''Monsieur laughed heartily to see 
me run so fast in the hope of catching him, while I," adds the 
little maiden sedately, "was glad that Monsieur was so well 
amused." 

With the death of Gaston of Orleans Chambord reverted 
to the Crown, and in 1660 Louis XIV paid a visit there with 
his bride, the Infanta Maria Theresa. They had been married 
at St. Jean de Luz and were making a royal progress through 
the country accompanied by the entire Court. Louis had never 
been to Chambord before ; he examined the entire building and 
came to the astonishing conclusion that it was too small ! Plans 
were made to enlarge it by the addition of an avant-cour sur- 
rounded by two wings and a grill, but the foundations only of 
one of the wings were laid, and on these Marshal Saxe later 
erected barracks for his Uhlans. 

Louis XIV came frequently to Chambord for hunting, 
throughout his reign, and when there always provided royally 
for the entertainment of his Court. The daily routine included a 
hunt, followed by a banquet, then the King's reception from 6 to 
10, and a ball to wind up with. One of the wings of the Guard 
room was fitted up as a theatre, with the royal box backing 
against the double stair. Here Moliere gave the first repre- 
sentations of "Pourceaugnac" and the "Bourgeois Gentil- 
homme." Everyone had been agog over the recent visit of 
some Turks to Paris, and the King thought it would be amus- 
ing to have them represented on the stage. Moliere was told, 
therefore, to write a play introducing Turks, and the "Bour- 
geois Gentilhomme" was the result. The impression made by 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

the first representation was disheartening. The King sat 
through the entire performance without moving a muscle, and 
the audience, of course, followed suit. The second perform- 
ance, five days later, came off no better, and Moliere, half dead 
with anxiety, was hardly able to appear at the supper after- 
wards. He could see the courtiers nudging one another, and 
whispering together that his powers were evidently exhausted : 
he was no longer amusing. Suddenly the King began to talk 
about the play, saying it was the most laughable thing he had 
ever seen in his life, quite the best that Moliere had yet written. 
In an instant all was changed and the courtiers crowded about 
the fortunate author, congratulating him on his brilliant 
success ! 

When the Court drove down to Chambord in the autumn of 
1684 there was much secret comment and conjecture aroused by 
the unexpected sight of Madame de Maintenon, meek and self- 
efifacing as usual, seated up beside the Dauphine in the King's 
carriage, while Madame de Montespan, with her three children, 
was relegated to one of the carriages of the suite. This was, 
in fact, just about the date of the secret marriage between the 
King and Madame de Maintenon. 

Louis XIV paid one more visit to Chambord, but after that 
the chateau was left to forty years of abandonment and neglect ; 
then, in 1725, Louis XV gave it as a residence to his father-in- 
law, Stanislas Leczinska, driven out of Poland by the Elector 
of Saxony. 

This exiled King lived contentedly at Chambord for eight 
years. He liked nothing better than to potter about among 
the country-people, standing godfather for their babies and 
advising them as to the management of their farms and their 
families. He injured the appearance of the chateau by filling 

342 



CHATEAU OF CHEVERNEY: FROM THE GARDEN 





1 



S*»t_ _^ __..- 



CHAMBORD 

in the moats, which he conceived to be unsanitary, and by 
obHterating the terraces, thereby giving the building its present 
squat appearance. 

Twelve years later, when Stanislas had gone to take pos- 
session of the duchies of Bar and Lorraine, given him in 
satisfaction of his claim on Poland, Louis XV handed over 
Chambord to a very different kind of tenant, Hermann Maurice, 
Marshal Saxe, the natural son of Augustus II of Saxony and 
the Countess of Konigsmark. Here, after the Peace of Aix- 
la-Chapelle in 1748, the Marshal established himself with two 
regiments of Uhlans and a throng of gay companions, and 
for two years the entire country-side was enlivened by echoes 
of the roystering life at the chateau. Six cannons captured from 
the enemy guarded the entrance; horses ran wild through the 
park, trained like those of a modern fire-brigade to race to their 
stalls at the fanfare of the trumpets, to be caparisoned for the 
daily review. The great court resounded to the beating of 
drums and the clash of arms, and the forest echoed to the thun- 
der of the horses' hoofs as the Uhlans charged an imaginary 
enemy. Hunting, feasting and revelry followed each other 
without intermission, and then, in a moment, all the gay life 
ceased. On 30th November, 1750, the Marshal died, worn out 
by forty-two years of unmeasured fatigue and dissipation. For 
ten days the cannons boomed forth every quarter of an hour, 
while for thirty days more the body of the victor, of Fontenoy 
lay exposed upon a bed of state surrounded by sixteen standards 
captured in battle. 

This closed the brilliant annals of Chambord. Forty years of 
neglect followed by the Revolution reduced the chateau to 
such a state of dreary ruin that, although Napoleon I gave it 
to Charles IV of Spain, whom he had despoiled of a kingdom, 

345 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

the Spanish King never took any steps to claim it, and some 
years later the chateau and domain were presented to the 
Emperor's Chief of Staff, Marshal Berthier. After Berthier's 
death his widow, first cutting down all the timber, offered the 
estate for sale, and in 1821 a public subscription was started 
to purchase it and present it as the gift of the nation to the 
infant Duke of Bordeaux, grandson of Charles X and heir 
presumptive to the ancient monarchy. Notwithstanding a 
furious pamphlet launched by Paul Louis Courier, denouncing 
the project, it was carried into effect; the required sum, 
1,542,000 francs, was raised and the domain and chateau of 
Chambord were purchased and offered to the guardians of the 
young Prince. Yet so bitter was the party feeling aroused by 
Courier's allusions to the elder and younger branches of the 
Royal House, that Charles X hesitated several years before 
he dared to accept the gift in his grandson's name, and would 
hardly allow the young Prince's mother to stop at Chambord 
for a few days in 1828, when she was passing through Blois.^ 
Two years later came the Revolution of July and the fall 
of the Bourbons, after which the Duke of Bordeaux dropped 
his royal title and assumed the style of Count of Chambord. 
An effort was made by the Government to sequester the estate, 
and it was only after twenty years of litigation that the Count 
of Chambord was definitely established in his rights. The only 
visit that he ever paid to the chateau was in 1871, when he 
spent two nights there and wrote a letter to the French people 

^ Courier declared that the impressions Duke of Orleans, head of the younger 
the young Prince would receive from the branch of the royal House), was at col- 
walls of Chambord could be nothing but lege,receivingagood, sound, monarchical 
pernicious. Were it a question of raising education, and at the same time learning 
money wherewith to educate him, that certain eternal verities of which his an- 
would indeed be worth while. The Duke cestors had known nothing, 
of Chartres, he observed (son of the 






CHATEAU OF CHAMBORD: LA SALLE DES GARDES 



CHEVERNEY 

which was practically the death-blow to his cause. On his 
death, in 1883, Chambord passed to its present proprietors, the 
Duke of Parma and the Count of Bardi, sons of the Duchess of 
Parma, the only sister of the Count of Chambord. 

The chateau is kept in repair, but there has been no attempt 
to restore the interior to anything like a habitable state. Cham- 
bord has now the frigid look of a place that has long since 
ceased to feel the pulse of life beating within its walls, and one 
realizes in looking at the chateau that the day of such monu- 
mental abodes has passed away forever. 

After leaving Chambord the road runs for several miles 
through the forest of Boulogne, then emerges on a wind-swept 
plain, dips into the valley of the Conon, and brings one at last 
to the remote little village of Cheverney, the most stirring events 
of whose sleepy existence probably consist in the arrival of 
visitors to the chateau. 

A stone gateway opposite the church opens on a short avenue, 
beyond which stands the house. Before it stretches a wide, 
sunlit space ornamented with flower-beds and conventionally 
clipped trees in tubs. 

Cheverney is an inhabited chateau; inhabited, moreover, by 
descendants of the man who first built upon the site, in the XVth 
century, one Jacques Hurault, Sieur of Grange, Cheverney, 
Vibray, and Huriel. His most eminent descendant was the 
minister of Henry IV, Philippe Hurault, known as the Chan- 
cellor Cheverney, whose son built the present chateau in 1634. 
Some generations later the property passed from the Hurault 
family, and after changing hands many times was bought back 
in 1825 by the Marquis de Hurault de Vibray, whose descend- 
ants still own it. 

The chateau is a mellow, dignified building in the style of 

349 



THE CHATEAUX OF TOURAINE 

Louis XIV. At both ends of the facade rise square pavilions 
surmounted by rounded roofs and lanterns. Between the win- 
dows of the second floor are a row of niches holding busts, and 
the broken line of the roofs is further relieved by dormers and 
circular windows. 

Within, the decorations and furnishings are all in a style 
of rich and sober elegance. There are series of panel-pictures 
by Jean Mosnier, a native of Blois who flourished in the early 
part of the XVIIth century, sculptured chimney-pieces belonging 
to the same period, painted ceilings and portraits by Clouet, 
Porbus, and other artists of the French school. A stately stair 
of carved stone leads to the apartments on the second floor 
called "the King's suite," containing, besides many fine old 
tapestries and paintings, a travelling chest of Henry IV and 
an archaic-looking bedstead, perhaps the "old bed with its old 
hangings," which the Chancellor Cheverney could in no wise 
be induced tc give up. 

Not a single episode of note, not a tragedy, not a scandal is 
associated with the chateau of Cheverney. Its annals are of 
that simple type which, if they do not make history, do at least 
make happiness. 

After reading of the wars and tumults, the murder and blood- 
shed, the intrigues and heart-breaks that have thrown their 
dark shadows athwart the walls of so many others of the 
chateaux, one is glad to carry away as a last impression the 
picture of this fair, stately mansion, standing amidst its lawns 
and flower-beds and bathed in the sweet sunshine. 



350 



CHATEAU OF CHEVERNEY 



I 






INDEX 



INDEX 



I 



Abd-el-Kader, Emir, at Amboise, 199 
Zigidius, Roman General, besieges Chi- 
non. III 

Alain Barbetorte, Count of Nantes, 112 

Alaric II, defeated by Clovis, 8, 112 

Albany, John, Duke of. Uncle of Cath- 
erine de Medicis, 272 

Albret, Alain d', marries his daughter to 
CjEsar Borgia, 144; tries to marry 
Anne of Brittany, 156 

Alengon, the Duke of, son of Henry II, 
220, 223, 318 

Alexander VI, Divorce of Louis XII, 
144; treaty with Charles VIII, 181 

Amboise, Charles d'. Grand Master un- 
der Louis XII, 313, 314 

Amboise, Charles d', Chamberlain under 
Louis XI, builds Chaumont, 310 

Amboise, Georges, Cardinal d', 144, 313 

Amboise, Hugh d', 171 

Amboise, Louis d', forfeits the Chateau 
of Amboise, 171 

Amboise, Pierre d', Sieur of Chaumont, 
310, 314 

Ancre, Concino Concini, Marshal d', 249, 
231 

Anne de Beaujeu, Regent, daughter of 
Louis XI, 44, 74, 104, 162, 178 

Anne of Brittany, early history and mar- 
riage with Charles VIII, 156; death, 
215 ; death of Charles VIII, 182 ; death 
of the Dauphin, 182; her device, 107; 
founds an order for virtuous ladies, 
107; Livre d'Heures of, 54; marriage 
of Claude of France, 219; marriage 
with Louis XII, 186; rooms in the 
Chateau of Loches, 104; tomb of her 
children, 22 

Anonyme de Marmoutier, 1', 91 

Aqueduct near Luynes, 252 

Armagnac, Bernard VII, d', becomes 
head of the Orleans party, 122; his 
death, 125; his daughter married to 
the Duke of Orleans, 209 

Armagnacs, massacre of the, 125 

Arnoul, Duke of Flanders, murder of 
William Longsword, 112 



Arras, treaty of, loi 

Arthur of Brittany, deprived of his 

birth-right by his uncle, 69; gives 

Langeais to Robert de Vitre, 150; 

murdered, 70 
Aumale, Claude de Lorraine, Due d', 

219, 268 

Aumale, Due d', 2d son of Louis Phil- 
ippe, 199 

Autun, the Bishop of, confined at Loches, 
80 

Avisseau, the story of, 50 



Balue, Cardinal La, confined at Loches, 
TZ ; his so-called cell at Plessis-des- 
Tours, 42 

Balzac, Honore de, birthplace of, 53; 
house of Mile. Gamard, Tours, 25 ; 
Le Lys dans la Vallee, 19 
Bardi, the Count of, one of the present 

proprietors of Chambord, 349 
Bartholomew, St., the Massacre of, 108 
Bastard of Wandonne, the, 136 
Bastille, "oubliette" in the, 81 
Battles : 

Azincourt, 122 
Crecy, 121 
Novaro, 79 
Poitiers, 121 
Pontlevoi, 64 
Verneuil, 38, 129 
Vouille, 8 
Baudricourt, Robert de, and Jeanne 

d'Arc, 130 
Beaufort, the Duke of, son of Cesar, 

Duke of Vendome, 286 
Beaulieu, the Abbey of, founded by Fulk 

Nerra, 57 
Beauvillier, Paul, Duke of, buys Chau- 
mont, 322 
Becchi, Gentile, Florentine Ambassador 

to the Court of Charles VIII, 181 
Beggars at Tours in the 14th century, 14 
"Belle des Belles," the, see Agnes Sorel 
Belles Cousines, Hystoire et Plaisante 
cronique, etc., 155 



355 



INDEX 



Berangaria, widow of Richard Coeur-de- 

Lion, inherits Loches, 69 
Bernard, Jean, Archbishop of Tours, 

struggle with the chapter of Loches, 96 
Berthier, Marshal, Napoleon gives him 

Chambord, 346 
Bertholet, a bourgeois of Tours, buys 

Azay-le-Rideau, 299 
Bertholet, Gilles, rebuilds the chateau, 

300 
Bertrade de Montfort, 5th wife of Fulk 

le Rechin and 2d wife of King Philip 

I, 68 
Biencourt, Marquis de, late owner of 

Azay-le-Rideau, 305 
Bohier, Antoine, loses Chenonceaux, 263, 

271 
Bohier, Thomas, Minister of Louis XI, 

builder of Chenonceaux, 262 ; his tomb 

at St. Saturnin's, 14 
Boissy, Madame du, 98 
Bordeaux, the Duke of, given Chambord 

by the nation, 346 
Borgia, Cxsar, his reception at Chinon, 

144 
Bouillon, Robert IV de la Mark, Duke 

of, 268 
Bourbon, Anthony de. King of Navarre, 

the Renaudie conspiracy, 188 
Bourbon, Antoinette de, wife of Claude 

of Lorraine, Duke of Guise, 219 
Bourbon, the Bastard of, Admiral of 

France, 74 
Bourbon, Cardinal de, to succeed Henry 

III, 48; murder of the Duke of Guise, 

226 
Bourbon, Constable de, conspiracy in the 

reign of Francis I, 80 
Bourbon, Pierre de. Letter of Charles 

VIII to, 181 
"Bourgeois Gentilhomme," the, first pro- 
duced at Chambord, 341 
"Bourges, the King of," 127 
Bourre, Jean, Minister of Finance under 

Louis XI, 152 
Brantome, account of Agnes Sorel, 98; 

Charles d'Amboise, 314; Diane of 

Poitiers, 271 ; death of Anne of Brit- 
tany, 215 ; marriage of Francis I, 216 
Brenne, Count of, escape of Marie de 

Medicis, 235 
Breze, Louis de. Grand Seneschal of 

Normandy, husband of Diane of 

Poitiers, 80 
Brice, Saint, his cave at Marmoutier, 32 



Brigonnet, Guillaume, Cardinal St. Malo, 

Minister of Charles VIII, 263 ; builds 

clock tower of Tours, 14 
Brigonnet, Katherine, wife of Thomas 

Bohier, 262; her tomb at St. Satur- 
nin's, 14 
Bridge of Avignon, 35 
Bridge called the "Pont de Pierre," 

Tours, 53 
Bridge of St. Symphorien, Tours, 32 
Brittany, Anne of, see Anne, 
Brittany becomes a part of France, 159 
Brittany, device and motto of the dukes 

of, 107 
Broglie, the Princesse de, present owner 

of Chaumont, 327 
Burgundy, Jean Sans Peur, Duke of, his 

attitude in the English wars, 2)7 ■> 125; 

murder of the Duke of Orleans, 209, 

121 ; murdered at Montereau, 126 
Burgundy, Philippe le Bon, Duke of, 

goes over to the English, 126; besieges 

Compiegne, 136 
Burgundy, Philippe le Hardi, Duke of, 

his quarrel with the Duke of Orleans, 

206 



"Csesar's Granaries," Amboise, 175 

"Cages" at Loches, ^z 

Calais, captured by the English, 121 

Calixtus, Pope, rehabilitation of Jeanne 
d'Arc, 137 

Castelnau-Chalosse, the baron of, exe- 
cuted at Amboise, 195 

Castra, Roman, 3 

Cathedral of St. Gatien, Tours, 20, 26 

Catherine of France, daughter of Charles 
VI, treaty of marriage with Henry V 
of England, 126 

Catherine de Medicis, 264; buys Chau- 
mont, 310, 317; consults the astrologer 
Ruggieri, 317; her death, 229; her es- 
tate, 281 ; murder of the Duke of 
Guise, 226 

Cauchon, Pierre, Bishop of Beauvais, 
conducts the trial of Jeanne d'Arc, 136 

Chalais conspiracy, the, 286 

Chambord, Count of, see Bordeaux, 
Duke of, 

Chapels : 

St. Calais, Blois, 211 
St. Hubert, Amboise, 175 
St. Martin, in the Chateau of 
Chinon, 135 



35^ 



INDEX 



St. Martin, at Tours, 8, lo 
St. Salle-Boeuf, Loches, 63 
St. Sepulchre, Luynes, 252 

Charlemagne at Tours, 9 

"Charlemagne Bible," the, 54 

Charles II, le Chauve, the Girdle of the 
Virgin, 92 

Charles V, le Sage, alters the Louvre 
and builds the Hotel des Tournelles, 
97 ; the Hundred Years War, 121 ; 
"Livre d'Heures" of, 54 

Charles VI, le Bien-Aime, after the 
battle of Azincourt, 122; death, 126 

Charles VII, and Agnes Sorel, 98; at 
Azay-le-Rideau, 296; begins the Cha- 
teau of Loches, 73 ; escape from Paris, 
125 ; fall of La Tremoille, 141 ; Jeanne 
d'Arc, 132; marriage of the Dauphin, 
38; murder of the Duke of Burgundy, 
126 

Charles VIII, his buildings at Amboise, 
178; death, 185; Italian campaign, 181 ; 
life at Amboise, 178; marriage with 
Anne of Brittany, 160; receives St. 
Francis de Paul, 175; tomb of chil- 
dren of, 22 

Charles IX, at Chenonceaux, 277; at 
Loches, 108 

Charles X, the gift of Chambord to his 

grandson, 346 
Charles IV, of Spain, Napoleon gives 

him Chambord, 345 
Charles V, Emperor, at Amboise, 187; 

at Chambord, 337 ; at Loches, 107 ; 

betrothed to Claude of France, 214; 

the treaty of Madrid, 81 
Charlotte of Savoy, wife of Louis XI, 

104, 177 
Chateau Royal of Tours, the, 35, 38 
Chateauneuf, 13, 19 
Chaumie, Dr., owner of Plessis-les- 

Tours, 42 
Choiseul, Duke of, exchanges Pompa- 
dour for Amboise, 172 

Churches : 

Les Carmes, Tours, 13 

St. Denis, Tours, 13 

St. Etienne, Chinon,_ 143 

St. Florentin, Amboise, 177 

St. Genevieve, Luynes, 251 

St. Julien, Tours, 49 

St. Mary Magdalene, later the Vir- 
gin and St. Ours, Loches, 91 

St. Maurice, Chinon, 143 

Notre Dame du Bout-des-Ponts, 
Amboise, 172 

Notre Dame la Riche, Tours, 13 



St. Ours, Loches, destroyed in the 

Revolution, 97 
St. Pierre-des-Corps, Tours, 50 
St. Saturnin, Tours, 13 
St. Sauveur, Langeais, 162 
Cinq Mars, the Conspiracy of, 156; le 
Marquis de, 155 ; Pile and Chateau de, 
155 
Claude of France, betrothed to Charles, 
Infant of Spain, 214; betrothed to 
Francis, Prince of Angouleme, 187, 214 ; 
married to Francis, Prince of Angou- 
leme, 216; receives Brittany as her 
marriage portion, 296 
Clement V, suppresses the Order of 

Knights Templars, 119 
Clement VII (Julian de Medicis), 272 
Clos-Luce, Amboise, 176 
Clovis, defeats Alaric II, 112; takes Am- 
boise, 171 ; his veneration for St. Mar- 
tin, 8 

Colombe, Michael, altar screen at St. 
Saturnin's, 14; tomb of children of 
Charles VIII, 22 

Commines, Philippe de, his cage at 
Loches, 74; his cell at Loches, 62; his 
cell at Plessis-les-Tours, 42; his ac- 
count of the death of Charles VIII, 
182 ; his account of the death of Louis 
XI, 47; engages in a plot against the 
Regent, 162; his marriage, 142 

Compiegne, Jeanne d'Arc made prisoner 
at the siege of, 136 

Concino Concini, Marshal d'Ancre, fa- 
vorite of Marie de Medicis, 231, 247 

Conde, the Prince of, and the Renaudie 
Conspiracy, 188, 276 

Constance of Castille, 2d wife of Louis 
VII, ns 

Cottier, James, Louis Xlth's doctor, 44 

Coudray, Chateau de, Chinon, 141 

Council of Tours, 113 

Courier, Paul Louis, pamphlets denounc- 
ing purchase of Chambord, 346 

Crusade, the First, preached by Urban 
II at Marmoutier, 31, 113 

Curfew rung from St. Saturnin's, Tours, 
14 



Diane of Poitiers, see Poitiers 
Domremy, birthplace of Jeanne d'Arc, 

130 
Donjon de Coudray, Chinon, 141, 120 
Donjon of Loches, 62 
Douglas, Archibald, Earl of, created 



357 



INDEX 



Duke of Touraine, 37; killed at battle 
of Verneuil, 38 

Du Bellay, Sieur de Langeais, 162 

Ducos, Roger, given Amboise by Napo- 
leon, 199 

Dunois, 160 

Dupin, Claude, Fermier General, buys 
Chenonceaux, 286 

Edict of Amboise, 196 

Edward III of England, his claim to 

the throne of France, 121 
Edward V of England, betrothed to 

Anne of Brittany, 156 
Eleanor of Aquitaine, repudiated by 

Louis VII, marries Henry Plan- 

tagenet, 114 
Emma, Queen of Lothair, and the Girdle 

of the Virgin, 92 
Enghien, Mile, d' granddaughter of the 

great Conde, 286 
Epernon, the Duke of, escape of Marie 

de Medicis, 62, 231 
Ermengarde, daughter of Fulk Nerra, 68 
Estampes, Mme. d', favorite of Francis 

I, 268 
Estrees, Gabrielle d', favorite of Henry 

IV, 285 
Eudes, Count of Blois, see Odo 
Eustache, Saint, Bishop of Tours, 91 

Ferdinand I, of Arragon, 178, 181 
Ferrara, the Cardinal Legate of, 277 
Fireworks introduced into France, 278 
Florent, Saint, attempt to remove his 

relics, 67 
"Flying Squadron," the, 277 
Fort St. Georges, Chateau of Chinon, 138 
"Forty-five," a band called the, 224 
Fountain in the Grand Marche, Tours, 

16 

Fountains, public, first introduced into 

France, 16 
Fouquet, Louis XlVth's Minister, 196 
Francis I, of Angouleme, additions to 
the Chateau of Blois, 212; additions 
to the Chateau of Loches, 107 ; at Am- 
boise, 187; builds Chambord, 333, 337; 
conspiracy of the Constable de Bour- 
bon, 80; and Leonardi da Vinci, 176; 
marries Claude of France, 216; quat- 
rain on Agnes Sorel, 98; views skull 
of the murdered Duke of Burgundy, 
126 ; the treaty of Madrid, 81 



Francis II, and the Guises, 188; at 
Chenonceaux, 275 ; watches the exe- 
cutions of Amboise, 195 

Francis I, Duke of Brittany, device and 
motto of, 107 

Francis II, Duke of Brittany, 156 

Francis de Paul, Saint, brought to 
France by Louis XI, 47, 175 

Franklin, Benjamin, his medallion at 
Chaumont, 323 • 

Fulk the Good, 2d Count of Anjou, 112 

Fulk Nerra, 4th Count of Anjou, 61, 63; 
builds a keep at Langeais, 149, 162; 
burial place of, 57 ; burns Chateauneuf, 
13 ; founds church of the Chateau of 
Amboise, 176 

Fulk the Surly, 6th Count of Anjou, 
confines his brother at Chinon, 68, 113 

Fulk le Jeune, 7th Count of Anjou, 69; 
founds the church of Langeais, 162; 
liberates his uncle, 113; marries Mili- 
cent, daughter of Baldwin II of Jeru- 
salem, 162; takes the Cross, 31 

Geoffrey Martel, 5th Count of Anjou, 64, 
68 

Geoffrey le Barbu, brother of Fulk the 
Surly, 6th Count of Anjou, 113 

Geoffrey the Handsome, 8th Count of 
Anjou, marries the ex-Empress Ma- 
tilda, 69, 113 

Geoffrey, son of Fulk the Surly, poisoned 
by his step-mother, 69 

Geoffrey, son of Geoffrey the Hand- 
some, 8th Count of Anjou, 113, 114 

Geoffrev, illegitimate son of Henry II of 
England, 118 

Gerard d'Athes, holds Loches for King 
John, 70 

Giac, Pierre de, the Chamberlain, 128 

Girdle of the Virgin, the, 92 

Gouin, Hotel, Tours, 16 

Grande Mademoiselle, the, visits her 
father at Chambord, 338 

Grand' Salle of the Middle Ages, the, 
210 

Gregory of Tours, Bishop and Historian, 
21 

Guesclin, Bertrand du, his victories over 
the English, 121 

Guise, Francis, 2d Duke of, murdered 
at Orleans, 219; and the Prince of 
Conde, 276; and the Renaudie Con- 
spiracy, 188 

Guise, Henry, 3d Duke of, 220 ; murdered 
at Blois, 226 



358 



INDEX 



Guise, the 4th Duke of, escapes from 

Tours, 35 
Guise, Louis, Cardinal, murdered at 

Blois, 230 
Guise, origin of the House of, 219 

Haraucourt, Guillaume de, Bishop of 
Verdun, inventor of the "cage," 73 

Hautefort, Mile, de, and Louis XIII, 155 

Haillon, Bernard du, anecdote of Agnes 
Sorel, 98 

Helene de Chambes, wife of Philippe de 
Commines, 142 

Henry II, his additions to the Chateau 
of Chambord, 334; his additions to 
the Chateau of Loches, 107 ; at Loches, 
108; his death, 274; and Diane of 
Poitiers, 267, 274; his marriage with 
Catherine de Medicis, 272 

Henry III, 220; at Chenonceaux, 278; 
holds his Parliament at Tours, 48; 
assassinated, 230, 281 ; murder of the 
Duke of Guise, 223 ; treaty with Henry 
of Navarre, 230 

Henry IV, of Navarre, abjures Prot- 
estantism, 49; enters into an alliance 
with Henry HI, 48; assassinated at 
Paris, 48, 231 ; divorces Margaret of 
Valois and marries Marie de Medicis, 
230; at Loches, 108; succeeds to the 
throne, 230 

Henry II, of England, 9th Count of 
Anjou, 113; his additions to the Cha- 
teau of Chinon, 113, 138, 143; his rule 
in Touraine, 36 

Henry V, of England, the battle of Azin- 
court, 122; death, 126; marriage with 
Catherine of France, 126 

Henry VI, Emperor, imprisons Richard 
Coeur-de-Lion, 69 

Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, Minister 
to the Court of Louis XIII, 247, 248 

Hildegarde, 3d wife of Charlemagne, 
dies at Tours, 9 

Hubert de Bourg, holds Chinon against 
Philip Augustus, 119 

Hugo, Victor, Le Roi s' Amuse, 81 

Huguenot Balcony, the, 175, I95 

Huguenots massacred at Amboise, 152; 
massacred at Loches, 108; pillage the 
basilica of St. Martin, 10; pillage the 
Cathedral of Tours, 22 

Hundred Years War, breaking out of 
the, 121 

Hurault, Jacques, Sieur of Cheverney, 
349 



Hurault, Philippe, Chancellor, Chever- 
ney, 349 

Ingelger, father of the first Count of 

Anjou, 171 
Institut de France, the, 165 
Isabelle of Arragon (ist), wife of Philip 

the Bold, 151 
Isabelle of Bavaria, wife of Charles VI, 

206; exiled to Tours, 37, 122 
Isabelle of France, wife of Edward II 

of England, 120 
Isabelle of France, wife of Charles, 

Duke of Orleans, 209 
Isabelle of Lorraine, sister-in-law of 

Queen Mary of Anjou, loi 

Jacques Cceur, loi ; accused of the death 

of Agnes Sorel, 102 
James V of Scotland, at Loches, 107 
Jean de Metz, escorts Jeanne d'Arc to 

Chinon, 131 

Jeanne d'Arc, 130 

Jeanne of France, wife of Louis XII, 
144; her marriage annulled, 185 

John the Good, taken prisoner at 
Poitiers, 121 

John Lackland, King of England, loses 
his continental possessions, 70; mur- 
der of Prince Arthur, 70; seizes 
Loches, 69; summoned by Philip Au- 
gustus, 69; treachery to his father, 117 

John XII, Pope, and Geoffrey Grise- 
gonelle, 91 

Judicael, Count of Brittany, 149 

Justes, tomb of the Bohiers, carved by 
the, 14 

Knights Templars, suppression of the 
Order of, 119; carvings at Chinon, 141 

La Broce, Pierre de, favorite of Philip 
the Bold, 150 

La Fontaine, his visit to Amboise, 196 

La Tremoille, Georges de, loi ; his dis- 
grace, 141 ; and the Constable Riche- 
mont, 129 

"League," the, 48 

Leczinska, Stanislas, King of Poland, at 
Chambord, 342 

Leduc, Pierre Rene, cure of Loches, pre- 
serves the Girdle of the Virgin, 92 

Le Ray-Chaumont, Jacques Donatien, 
former owner of Chaumont, 323 

Le Roi s' Amuse, Victor Hugo, 81 



359 



INDEX 



Lesbahy, Philippe, wife of Gilles Bertho- 

let, 300 
Library of Tours, the, 53 
Lidoire, Saint, Bishop of Csesarodunum, 

7, 20 
Ligue du Bien Public, the, 310 
Limeuil, Isabelle de, 278, 322 
Lorraine, Cardinal, the Renaudie Con- 
spiracy, 188 
Lorraine, Claude of, founder of the 

House of Guise, 219 
Lorraine, Frangoise of, married to the 

Duke of Vendome, 285 
Louis II, the Stammerer, 171 
Louis VII, repudiates his wife, Eleanor 

of Aquitaine, 114 
Louis IX, Saint, and his Chamberlain, 

Pierre de la Broce, 150 

Louis XI, additions to the Chateau of 
Amboise, 177; additions to the Cha- 
teau of Loches, 104 ; and Agnes Sorel, 
102; builds the Chateau of Langeais, 
142, 152; builds the Chateau of Ples- 
sis-les-Tours, 42; provides cages for 
his prisoners, 73 ; his death at Plessis- 
les-Tours, 43 ; the dungeons at Loches, 
76; his marriage with Margaret of 
Scotland, 38; treatment of the Due 
d'Alengon, 143 

Louis XII, of Orleans, his additions to 
the Chateau of Amboise, 187 ; his ad- 
ditions to the Chateau of I31ois, 210, 
240; his additions to the Chateau of 
Loches, 104; his birth at Blois, 210; 
capture and imprisonment of Ludovico 
Sforza, 76; his death, 216; death of 
Anne of Brittany, 215 ; death of the 
son of Charles VIII, 182; and Georges 
d'Amboise, 314; his life at Blois, 214; 
marriage with Jeanne of France an- 
nulled, 185 ; marriage with Anne of 
Brittany, 186; marriage with Mary 
Tudor, 216; joins plot against the 
Beaujeu government, 74, 162 

Louis XII, of Orleans, an early suitor 

of Anne of Brittany, 156, 162 
Louis XIII, and Charles d'Albert of 

Luynes, 247; and Mile, de Hautefort, 

155 
Louis XIV, at Chambord, 341 ; and 

Louise de la Valliere, 338; Triumphal 

Arch at Tours, 26 
Louis XV, and the tomb of Agnes Sorel, 

103 

Louise of Savoy, Amboise assigned as 
her residence, 187 ; and the Semblen- 
Qay administration, 300 



Louise de Vaudemont-Lorraine, wife of 
Henry III, 281 

Ludovico the Moor, Duke of Milan, 
treaty with Charles VIII, 181 ; his im- 
prisonment at Loches, 76 

Luynes, Charles d'Albert, ist Duke of, 
231, 247, 252; Louis Charles d'Albert, 
3d Duke of, 255 ; Langeais lost in the 
Revolution by the Duke of, 162 

Lys dans la Vallee, le, Balzac, 19 



Madeleine of France, wife of James V 

of Scotland, 107 
Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, 

mother of Catherine de Medicis, 272 
Madrid, Treaty of, 81 
Maille, now Luynes on the Loire, 248 
Maille, Touchard de, sells his estate of 

Montilz-les-Tours to Louis XI, 42 
Maintenon, Mme. de, secretly married to 

Louis XIV, 342 
"Mainz Bible," the, 54 
Mancini, Laura, niece of Cardinal Maza- 

rin, 286 
Mansard, his wing at the Chateau of 

Blois, 211, 212, 243 
Margaret of Austria, her marriage with 

Charles VIII, 159, 160 
Margaret of Scotland, ist wife of Louis 

XI, 38 
Margaret of Valois, ist wife of Henry 

IV, 230 
Margaret of Valois, sister of Francis I, 

338 
Marmoutier, 31, 32, 35 
Marques family, the, owners of Chenon- 

ceaux, 262 

Martin, Saint, 3 ; his cave at Marmou- 
tier, 32; the "Chape" of, 9; his cult 
restored, 10; his dwelling at Tours, 31 

Matilda, the ex-Empress, widow of 
Henry V, marries Geoffrey, Count of 
Anjou, 113, 69 

Maurice, St., the Cathedral of Tours 
dedicated to, 20 

Maximilian of Austria, married by 
proxy to Anne of Brittany, 159 

Maria Theresa, Infanta, wife of Louis 
XIV, 341 

Marie of Anjou, wife of Charles VII, 
127, 128; and Agnes Sorel, loi 

Marie of Brabant, 2d wife of Philip the 
Bold, 151 

Marie of Burgundy, wife of Maximilian 
of Austria, 156 

O 



36 



INDEX 



Marie^ of Cleves, 3d wife of Charles of 
Orleans, 209 

Marie of Guise-Lorraine, wife of James 

V of Scotland, 219 
Marie of Medicis, wife of Henry IV, 

230; her escape from Blois, 62, 231; 

her last years, 239 
Marie Stuart, 195, 275 
Marie Tudor, 3d wife of Louis XH, 216 
Mayenne, Charles, Duke of, brother of 

the Duke of Guise, 220 
Medicis, Alexander de, half-brother of 

Catherine, 272 
Medicis, Catherine de, see Catherine 
Medicis, Marie de, see Marie 
Medicis, Lorenzo de, 272 
Medicis, Pierre de, treaty with Charles 

VIII, 181 
Mercogliano, Passelo de, 271 
Mesme, Saint, at the siege of Chinon, 

112 
Milan, the Duchy of, claim of Louis XII 

to the, 76 
Milicent, daughter of Baldwin II, King 

of Jerusalem, 162 
Milieu, Chateau de, Chinon, 138 
Minimes Convent, Amboise, 175 
Molay, Jacques de, Grand Master of 

the Knights Templar, 120 
Moliere at Chambord, 341 
Montbazon, 57 
Montcoeur, the Duke of, 285 
Montespan, Mme. de, favorite of Louis 

XIV, 342 
Montgomery, a Scottish knight, acci- 
dentally kills Henry II, 274 
Montils, or Montilz-les-Tours, Louis XI 

builds at, 42 
Montpensier, Mile, de, her marriage 

with Gaston of Orleans, 286, 338 

Naples, claim of the House of Valois to 
the Kingdom of, 178 

Napoleon, Louis, liberates Emir Abd-el- 
Kader from Amboise, 199 

Nemours, the Duchess of, mother of 
Henry, Duke of Guise, 225 

Nini, an Italian artist of the i8th cen- 
tury, 323 

Normandy, conquest of by Henry V, 
125; reconquered by Charles VII, loi 

Odo (Eudes) II, Count of Blois, builds 
a stone bridge over the Loire, 35; 



builds a keep at Chaumont 310- de- 
feated at the battle of Pontlevoi, 64; 
loses Saumur, 67; loses Langeais, 149 
Orange trees first seen in France, 187 
Orleans, Charles the "Poet-Prince" of, 
209; taken prisoner at Azincourt, 122] 
209; marries Mary of Cleves, 209 
Orleans, Gaston, Duke of, brother of 
Louis XIII, 338; his alterations at 
Blois, 239; gets Amboise, 196; gets 
Blois, 239 

Orleans, Louis, Duke of, murdered by 
Jean Sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy, 
206, 121 

Orleans, the Vicomte de (or de Gati- 

nais), son-in-law of Fulk Nerra, 68 
Orleans, besieged by the English, 129 
Orme, Philibert de 1', 271 
Oubliettes, 81 

Pactius, Thomas, Prior of the collegiate 
church of Loches, 96 

Pallissy, Bernard, 50, 275 

Pantagrucl, etc., Rabelais, 144 

Parliaments held at Tours under Henry 
III and IV, 48 

Parma, the Duke of, present joint pro- 
prietor of Chambord, 349 

Passelo da Mercogliano, 187 

Pelouze, M., buys Chenonceaux, 287 

Philip I repudiates his wife and marries 
Bertrade de Montfort, 68 

Philip II, Augustus, aids Arthur of Brit- 
tany, 150; obtains Langeais, 150; be- 
sieges Loches and Chinon, 69, 70; his 
campaign of 1204-5, 119; his quarrel 
with King John, 69, 70; and Henry II 
of England, 115 

Philip III, the Bold, gives Langeais to 
Pierre de la Broce, 150 

Philip IV, the Handsome, suppresses the 
Order of Knights Templars, 119; his 
three sons die without heirs male, 120 

Philip VI, of Valois, succeeds to the 
throne, 121 

Philip, the Handsome, of Austria, at 
Blois, 214 

Pierrefonds, the oubliette of, 81 

Plessis-Bourre, or du-Vent, the Chateau 
of, 152 

Plessis-les-Tours, the Chateau of, 42 

Poitiers, Diane of. Duchess of Valenti- 
nois, 267; buys ground at Amboise, 
187 ; forced to give up Chenonceaux, 
322; her father's arrest and imprison- 
ment, 80 

I 



INDEX 



Poitiers, Jean of, Sieur de St. Vallier, 

father of Diane of, 272; involved in 

the plot of the Constable de Bourbon, 

80 
Pontbriand, Governor of Loches, 85 
Portail de la Crosse, the, Marmoutier, 32 
Port-Royal-des-Champs, 255 
Poulangey, Bertrand de, escorts Jeanne 

d'Arc to Chinon, 131 
Pourceaugnac, first produced at Cliam- 

bord, 341 
Praguerie, the, 102 
Primaticcio, directs the fetes at Chenon- 

ceaux, 275 
Puy, the Bishop of, imprisoned at Loches, 

80 

Quentin Durward, 43 

Rabelais at Chinon, 143; his house at 
Langeais, 162; his statue at Chinon, 
137 

Raffin, Antoine, obtains Azay-le-Rideau, 
300 

Raymond du Temple, alters the Louvre 
for Charles V, 97 

"Reine Blanche," the, see Louise de 
Vaudemont 

Renaissance, the French, 16, 261, 305; in 
Touraine, 43 

Renaudie Conspiracy, the, 188 

Revolution of July, the, 346 

Richard Coeur-de-Lion, at the confer- 
ence of Bon Moulins, 115; at the con- 
ference of Colombiers, 117; hears of 
his father's death, 118; his own death, 
119; re-takes Loches, 69; treaty of 
marriage with infant daughter of 
Louis Vn, 115 

Richard IH, of England, murder of his 
nephews, 156 

Richelieu, Cardinal, the Conspiracy of 
Cinq-Mars, 155 ; is given Chinon, 145 ; 
the reconciliation between Louis XIII 
and Marie de Medicis, 239 

Richemont, the Constable, loi, 102, 129, 
131, 142 

Rohan, Anne de, wife of the 3d Duke of 
Luynes, 255 

Romans driven out of Gaul, 112 

Roye, Eleanor de, wife of the Prince of 
Conde, 277, 278 

Rucellai, Abbe of Ligny, plans the es- 
cape of Marie de Medicis, 232 

Ruggieri, astrologer of Catherine de 
Medicis, 317 



St. Jean d'Acre, the fall of, 119 
Sardini, Scipion, 322 
Saumur, captured by Fulk Nerra, 67 
Savonarola, entry of Charles VIII into 

Florence, 181 
Saxe, Hermann Maurice, Marshal, 345 
Scottish Guard, the, their bedsteads at 

Loches, 62; the murder of the Duke 

of Guise, 225 
Semblengay, Jacques de Beaune, baron, 

Minister of Francis I, 16, 263 ; his 

downfall, 300 
Seven Sleepers of Marmoutier, the, 32 
Sforza, Ludovico, Duke of Milan, called 

the Moor, 76 
Siegfried, M., owner of the Chateau of 

Langeais, 162 
Sorel, Agnes, 98; and the Dauphin, 142 
Sourdeau, Jacques, Master of Works in 

the County of Blois, 212 
Spirals in Nature and Art, T. A. Cook, 

212 
Stael, Mme. de, at Chaumont, 323 ; her 

work on Germany suppressed, 324, 333 
Stael-Holstein, Augustus, baron of, 323 
Blois, Stephen, death of, 114 
Street nomenclature in Tours, 15 
Strozzi, Philip, 272 

Sulpice II, of Amboise, inherits Chau- 
mont, 310 



Tangui du Chatel, rescues the Dauphin 

from Paris, 125 
Terry, Mr., present owner of Chenon- 

ceaux, 288 
Thibaud le Tricheur, Count of Blois, 

310; tries to marry Eleanor of Aqui- 

taine, 114 
Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, the murder of, 115 
Thou, Augustus de, beheaded, 156 
Tomb of Agnes Sorel, at Loches, 103 
Tomb of the children of Charles VIII 

and Anne of Brittany, 22 
Toulouse, the Archbishop of, escape of 

Marie de Medicis, 232 
Trinqueau, Pierre Nepveu, called, 261, 

334 
Tristan, I'Hermite, so-called house of, at 

Tours, 15 
Tour: 

Agnes Sorel, Loches, 98 
de I'Archeveche, Tours, 25 



362 



INDEX 



Cesar, or Heurtault, Amboise, 175, 
178, 187 

Charlemagne, Tours, 9, 10 

de Guise, Tours, 26; escape of the 
Duke of Guise, 35 

de I'Horloge, 10 

Martelet, Loches, 70 

des Minimes, Amboise, 175, 178 

du Moulin, Blois, 205, 230, 243 

du Moulin, Chinon, 138 

Ronde, or Louis XI, Loches, 70 

St. Antoine, Loches, 107 
Tournelles, Hotel des, Paris, 98 
Tours-a-bec, Loches, 61 
Tours, Council of, 31 

Urban II, Pope, 31, 113 
Usse, the Chateau of, 155 

Valentine Visconti, wife of Louis, Duke 

of Orleans, 76, 209 
Valliere, Louise de la, favorite of Louis 

XIV, 338 
Vaucouleurs, 130 



Vaugien, Bertin de, alters Chaumont, 322 
Venant, manor of St., near Luynes, 252 
Vendome, Cesar, Duke of, son of Henry 

IV, 285; imprisoned at Amboise, 196 
Vendome, the Duke of, one of Louis 

XlVth's captains, 286 
Villeneuve, Count of, inherits Chenon- 

ceaux, 287 

Vinci, Leonardo da, the staircase at 
Blois, 212 ; his tomb at Amboise, 176 

Viollet-Le-Duc, the Cathedral of Tours, 
21 ; the collegiate church at Loches, 
96; oubliettes and the prisons of an- 
cient France, 81 

Visigoths come under Clovis's rule, 112 

Vitre, Robert de, Langeais is given to 
him by Arthur of Brittany, 150 

Walsh, Edward, 4th Earl, 327 

William Longsword, the murder of, 1 12 

Yolande of Arragon, 128, 142 



f 



363 

















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